FITTED SHEETS

by Jill Klein

They fit but they don’t fold
so I roll them into cylinders

and stuff them in the closet.
The door won’t close, of course,

because fitted sheets have hidden
springs. I suggest we make a hotel bed,

with flat sheets tucked in like fitted,
but my husband demurs.

He prefers military style, tight as a drum.
I am sagging now in late middle life

but I still like to feel the sun on my legs,
have an extra slice of key lime pie.

I hurt my knee digging out a dying rose
with brutal roots; it doesn’t want

to leave the earth. I bless its last-burst petals,
cup them, as I drop the gnarled canes

into the yard waste bin. Its replacement
rose, bushy orange and yellow,

sits nearby, drooping a bit. It should fit
but will need some planting mix.

The lavenders are shooting blue.
They, too, will get woody with age,

but today—the May sun like a cotton sheet,
lifting and falling.

Jill Klein holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a BA from Stanford University. In between came years of stay-at-home parenting and a career in banking. Her poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in Bellingham Review, Cider Press Review, LEON Literary Review, Portland Review, Radar Poetry, Rattle, The Shore, The Southern Review, and others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be found on Bluesky and Threads: @jkmvca.