When You Can’t Get Out of Bed

A poem for those stuck in a mattress sinkhole

Stand up, stupid! they say. Stride blindly into this busy writhing world.

No useful human hesitates — It’s duty, contribution that’ll be the measure of you.

Unless you’re special? Yes, a snowflake of lazy. A drain on taxpayers, the devil’s lackey.

Get up! It’s simple —

Yet ridiculous to all who’ve been here, ensnared in inertia, drowning soundlessly.

Don’t move, I say — despite the self-help tapes and mental mother-critics cursing your name.

This is your fight — not a marathon, but a stumble along, feeling your way across night’s cracked concrete.

Searching for home without streetlights or moon, just that cloud-shrouded star and a prayer north is due.

Hot metal in your chest, a medal for each breath, as others scoff at your microscopic accomplishment.

This is your struggle — to float in this jagged shadowy canal, observing the boats of moment after moment and willing yourself not to cling to any.

To tread heavy water, then finally swim an inch. Gaining strength, gaining faith that you’ll learn to rescue yourself.

This is a quiet fight, most likely — no wave of red cape, no horn spearing thigh, not even a crowd, blood-eyed and wild —

Just you and your personal sinkhole, and this, this singular

Sliver of time.

Wrest what you need from the depths, I say. The piles of blankets and silence — let them restore and revive you. Praise any sort of lord for these necessary luxuries.

Because someday, I promise — maybe six minutes from now, or an hour past next Saturday — you’ll arise,

Like a groggy doddering phoenix, ash-spattered, wings tattered — A sleepy-eyed eagle, feet too weary for takeoff, much less flight.

But arise you will, arise! arise!

Or at least lower protesting toes to the floor

And sing a quiet hymn of survival.