A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community

Back to Issue Twelve

 

"The Unmade Bed" by Sonya Schneider

The Unmade Bed

Bubbee taught me how to make hospital corners:

how to pull the sheet taut, tuck

 

in the triangle-shaped lower drape,

hold the corner in place and fold the top

 

over like a sealed envelope.

Tonight, I have woken from a vision.

 

My feet are caught in loose waves

of white cotton lapping at my dreams,

 

and she is before me, dark eyes pressed

against time’s shifting orbit.

 

Her words, so long silenced, expand

like paper wings and take flight.

 

I hear them in the wailing wind,

through the rustling bamboo, restless

 

as the crickets that sing into night.

Sonya Schneider

Sonya Schneider is a Northwest poet and playwright with San Diego roots. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Potomac Review, Raleigh Review, Moon City Review, Catamaran, SWWIM, 3Elements Literary Review, Sky Island Review, ONE ART, Mom Egg Review and West Trestle Review, among others. She was a finalist for New Letters' Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry and Naugatuck River Review’s Narrative Poetry Contest. A graduate of Stanford University and Pacific University’s MFA in Poetry, she lives in Seattle with her family.

 

 

Sonya Schneider