A PLACE FOR YOU IN BETWEEN THE SHEETS

I'll always remember my MLB bed sheet. It was cheap and thin and I wore it through.

I would pull the covers up past my chin on autumn nights and see all the team names on the underside written in reverse. Some were just meaningless strings of backward letters, but others seemed to be secret messages, dyed in the low-thread-count cotton.

“Boston” was “not sob”-- a fair state of mind for any New England baseball fan at the time.

The “Astros” were “sortsa,” which was sorta “sorta.” Which was sorta how I felt about the team.

The “Yankees” were “seek nay.” A quest for negation. How appropriate.

And the Mets. The “Mets” were “stem.” Like an apple's umbilical connection to the tree.

Like goddam Eden before the fall...