It is said that you
can tell a lot about someone
by the way that they sleep. Like,
being flat on your back is supposed
to mean that you don’t like being
the center of attention, of sleeping
in the fetal position means that
youre tough on the outside
but fragile inside.

Growing up, my family members called me
the furnace. I can’t decide if
my needing to fold myself around
another makes me selfish or protective.
I couldn’t sleep alone
and whoever got stuck sleeping with me
was subject to the enveloping of my limbs
while we slept.
There was no telling where
arms or legs would drift
but they would almost always
wrap around the closest, warmest body.

My sister and I shared a room
for ten years and she refused
to let me share a bed with her,
even on nights when I was so
terrified to close my eyes
because I knew that some day the world
would end and I might dream about it,
she refused to let me in.
Sometimes I would wait until she was
already asleep, and then covertly
try to slide in next to her without her
waking up. This proved to be
perpetually unsuccessful.
She was 3 years younger than me,
I had the upper hand in almost every
other aspect of our relationship,
except that she hated being touched
and all I needed was contact.

Eventually, my sister and I got our own rooms
and I spent a lot of existentially terrifying nights
in my parents’ bed until I moved out for college.
I did not try to sleep next to her again
until after we both moved out.  Until
Our brothers turned our old bedrooms
inside out with their own belongings
and my sister and I were left with
one bed to share.  She has since
been able to sleep next to me
Without a fight, and doesn’t protest
anymore, when she wakes up
and I am completely on her side
of the bed, blankets cocooned
around us, with my head between
her shoulder blades.  

It is almost 2 am again,
and tonight I am lover-less.
I will retreat to a mattress with
no body to fold my body around.
I will expel the heat from my skin
into nothing and I will wake up
and I will be fine. I am selfish
for wanting the heat and I’m selfish
for wanting to protect, and I don’t sleep
down the hall from my parents anymore
And I don’t share a room with my sister
anymore and I’ve hardly slept lately
feeling the weight and the space of alone.