Glory

Praise the hands who make the sheets. Who seed the dirt. Who pick the cotton. Who load the fibers in the machine, watch it carefully, cautiously. Praise the prisoners. Praise the night workers. Praise the eyes gone blurry, wet, the way my eyes get watching videos with you up late on our phones, giggling, watching dogs acting like humans, watching humans pretending to be bugs. Praise the bugs. Praise Ruby. Praise the sound of your laughter, how it skips an octave, how it bursts — your water sound, love sound, gut sound. Praise the cave we make with the sheets. Praise the whispers. The questions. Praise the eyes who watch the machine so carefully they know how fibers dance into place, stuck together now, held together now, the eyes who close, briefly, holding laments, holding glory, somehow finding a way to behold. Praise the backs who hold the bodies who watch the fibers, who touch the fibers, the fibers changing colors, the fibers wrapped in plastic, the fibers floating in the ocean. Praise the fish who swim alongside tankers. The barnacles clung to their sides. Water lapping. Praise the whoosh of your hand sliding crumbs off the sheet. How they fall. How they travel into the stomach of our dog, sweet Ruby, who smacks her lips and yawns, sleeping now, next to us, wrapped in the being together of it. The warmth of it. The depths of it. Praise it. The eyes closing that comes at the end.