My Bedroom in the Dark
My Bedroom in the Dark
by Jordan McElheran
My bed is about
3 and a half
steps from
the door and
on a (roughly)
51 degree angle.
These notes make
It easy
to
navigate in
the dark.
But it’s not like
these things matter
when you’re in
my bed. It’s not
like I want to leave it
anyways.
This poem is eerily disjunctive. The first stanza is very specific about how to navigate at night from the bed to the door (“about” and “roughly” parodying the specific “notes”). The second stanza dismisses these specifics and adds that the poet isn’t inclined to leave bed. Why, we ask, has the poet made notes on how to leave and yet doesn’t want to leave? Two other things stick out. The word “night” isn’t actually mentioned, only “the dark.” And then the odd substitution of “you’re” for “I’m” in the second stanza, as though the poet were intentionally pulling us, or you the reader, into bed as a companion; specifically, “my bed.” I’m thinking “the dark” may be a state of mind and “my bedroom in the dark” a mental place where the poet feels most secure: very defined from the door, the exit to the outer world. But why then does the poet bring us in there? So as not to define us out of that picture. The poet wants us to understand and share this personal sense of seclusion, and perhaps be aware we may each have a similar space. That’s the reason for the poem.