Sleeping Net Quote by Jack B. Bedell

““Sleeping With the Net-Maker " She speaks to me when she's asleep. Her lips move but do not mean anything against the dark, each word air on my fingertips, each breath a twitch in her chest. At night I am another boundary containing her in her sleep like the blue linen ducks flying beneath her spreading hair, the sheets twisting between her glowing legs, the wooden frame holding her above the cold wooden floor. I watch her when she cannot know. Tonight I watch her hands weave a winding net over us. They float above the lines of her stomach tying each knot and squaring it off until the room is filled with twine. Soon she'll be the fisherman seining air for loaves of fish. She casts her net with arms spread out, feet together, hair swirling. Outside the water cracks against the glass to catch her throw. It gives up its form to take her net and washes over into the room teeming with fish and bread, thick with what she wants. I watch her cast for hours and learn to live beneath her grey water. She spills redfish at my feet but I tell her I'm not hungry. Her lips still move for me as she pulls the net toward us. I lie down among her piles of bread.””

— Jack B. Bedell