Sheets

Sheets

by Addy Robinson McCulloch

Damn fitted sheets. I can’t fold them.
I can’t make hospital corners either.
My mother ironed them. The sheets.

More precisely, the cleaning lady
ironed and then folded them,
beautifully, in our house where
one never used the wrong fork
or blew milk bubbles with a straw
or breathed any air
not laden with cigarette smoke.

Shopping the white sales,
my husband says,
“I thought you liked
those other sheets better.”
“No,” I answer,
“They’re not no-iron.”


-refers to line “that damn fitted sheet” from Richard Allen Taylor’s Domestic Advice to a Divorced Friend.