J-Patt's Blog

Hospital Corners

[as seen in Maya Magazine, http://drexelpublishing.org/maya/]

Things do not go as planned—

they do not sort, stack, or smooth

under and over like the bed’s

hospital corners that I struggle to

unmake, because the wrinkled sheets

remind me that father makes such

precision folds much better than I.

His hands, callused from repairing

the leaky kitchen faucet and

the derailed sliding door and

the frame of the bed I jumped on and

the button on my collar and

all the things that make these walls home,

still muster the strength to tuck in

my sheets into neat hospital corners.