Your last cleaning caused a tear in your side. Now I wake up some mornings with my legs and arms entwined with you, trapped inside your wounds, between your skin and cotton seepage.
I refuse to sew you up. I will not patch the holes the dogs have borne straight threw you. Patches and thread could not fix the damage that has been done to you. You must be retired to a closet shelf, an attic floor. Packed away in a trash bag full of mothballs. Stowed away in a crevice, so in a few years I can press my face to your destroyed tissue and remember why I pushed away so hard.
As a child you held all the tears and saliva that dripped from my face; the weeks of sickness and lost voices. These are the days I’m supposed to say I don’t need you. yet, I know tonight I will rest my head upon you once more.