Kept

The little boy’s days 

passed in unremarkable ways— 

but began and ended with his face 

pressed down in an old feather pillow 

that was remarkable indeed. 

Beneath its clean cotton case 

was the dark, drool-stained ticking 

that told the pillow’s true age 

and why on damp days 

it held the scent of time 

and the dank dreams of others deep inside. 

The boy knew only that he liked 

the way the pillow held his head. 

He was unaware that long ago 

on a different bed 

his great-grandfather 

had liked it for the same reason— 

not ten, not twenty, 

but more than forty years before— 

when it was purchased with a mate. 

It was one of what had been a pair for two 

‘til death left him to sleep alone. 

And then he chose to use the pillow 

that was hers and kept his own 

on the high hidden shelf of his corner closet.

 

By then the ticking had more than aged

—as all old pillows do. 

Like a blotter, it was hopelessly imbued 

with years of hair tonic, and hot-night sweat, 

and deep-sleep drool, and toward the end… 

the tears he did not touch for fear she'd know. 

The pillow was a dark and blotchy parchment, 

with all the variegated circle stains 

of paper peeling from a mildewed wall. 

 (All this was hidden by the flannel case 

that each night touched the little boy's face.) 

 

Such an ancient, ugly sack of feathers

would never be deliberately given or received; 

it would never be offered to a guest 

or sold at a sale. For who would want to use it? 

But life is full of things still kept 

well past their being wanted, 

and this was true of the old pillow 

before it was the boy’s. 

Just how the thing came to him 

the boy would never know. 

One morning he woke up and it was there. 

He liked the way it slept; 

he liked the way it kept 

the form of his face even as he rose 

to look back down at where he’d been. 

He liked the dreams of flying 

that it brought that first night 

(and would bring for years to come). 

 But what happened was: 

The day before the pillow came, 

his family spent a warm fall day 

at his Grandma’s. Her house sat 

on the corner of Forest and Riverview, 

a tired tract of broken streets 

and pocked and painted clapboard walls 

with faded-curtain windows 

and front-porch steps that stretched 

toward the narrow walk 

of broken concrete slabs 

that rolled unevenly 

(like dominoes laid across a lawn), 

heaved ever higher over time

 by the roots of chestnut trees that lined the way, 

their shade the only remnant of the better days 

the neighborhood had seen. 

 (The boy did not know the house, in fact,

was and always had been his great-grandfather’s 

whose daughter (the boy's grandma) 

and her husband moved in with 

when hard times called them home. 

So long before that now it seemed 

Great Grandpa was the guest, 

and those who knew the difference never said.) 

To the boy it was simply Grandma’s house, 

and for his siblings and cousins 

it was a magic place to be. 

There they were allowed to walk without grown-ups 

to the tiny corner store for ten cents worth 

of long paper strips with countless, clinging candy bumps 

in pastel rows for nibbling off like mice. 

Turning back toward the house 

(and passing it a short block the other way), 

they went to the park to play 

and roll down grassy hills 

'til someone called them home. 

 After all that and more that day… 

the little boy was sitting 

on the front porch listening 

to the melody of older voices talking in the dark... 

and fell asleep right there 

on the gray painted planks. 

They laughed when they saw him

 lying in the glow of the dresser lamp 

beyond the front bedroom window. 

His great grandfather slipped away 

(to that lamp-lit room inside) 

and came out with a pillow 

that had been out of sight and mind for years. 

“Here. Put this under his head at least.” 

They laughed again. 

The pillow had no case, 

but in the dark, its age spots went unnoticed. 

When it was time to go, 

the pillow floated with him in his father's arms 

from the old house to the car 

and once at home up to his bed— 

all without the glare of light— 

and through it all 

the boy was dead to the world 

as only children sleep. 

From then on,

the pillow was the boy's to keep 

(not that anyone but a four-year-old 

would claim it as his own). 

But even more remarkable 

is that this heavy feather pillow 

remained with him for more than twenty years. 

It was on his bed when… 

they moved from the country to the city; 

still there through grade school; 

still there when his little brother was born; 

still there when he did paper routes at dawn. 

Still there when they built the barn 

and house on worn-out Saturdays. 

It went with him to summer camps 

and road-trips far away and eventually... 

to college, covered in a starchy new case. 

There at night it was a touch of home 

and brought him sleep 

through love and loss and learning, too. 

But what he never knew… 

For no one ever does… 

is that the pillow held and shared 

forgotten dreams and kept 

him close to the past 

and to things forever passing 

and to those who gave them meaning. 

Even when he married 

the pillow was still kept with no more 

thought than had been given through the years. 

But marriage is a time 

for good and new and matching things, 

and not for the inexplicable artifacts of life— 

like this the nastiest pillow ever seen 

that for decades avoided scrutiny 

but whose sudden unsightliness 

leapt out each time they changed the sheets.

It was highly recommended not to keep— 

and actually brought the man a laugh in letting go— 

that day the pillow passed 

in some unremarkable way 

like all the unremarkable days 

it had absorbed. . 

© Copyright 2007, TK, Patterns of Ink