Every now and then,

you are allowed to tuck.

To tuck your head when the frame of your day snarls and looms overhead.

To tuck and roll when co-workers or co-inhabiters flip over and crush your self-appointed promise towards progress.

To tuck your sour remarks or bitter sentiments back between your teeth where they will eventually be swallowed and pass.

To tuck a bit of meaning into your day: by way of a minute’s mantra or by the power invested in you to decide that a pigeon poo-ing on your head must be a genius stroke of good fortune.

To tuck the binding of a sacred text, an old photograph of your lover’s shoulder, or the unruly cascade of your houseplant’s vine, back on top of its appointed shelf or pot.

To tuck the memories of your grandmother’s cinnamon rolls, her hands overflowing with sewing miracles, and her ability to scold you with both sternness and stifled laughter as she smiles with disbelief and declares, “oh, golly!”

To tuck all of her, close to your heart.

To tuck yourself between cotton sheets draping, wistful, across your wrinkled skin. To have and to hold your tired, worn-thin muscles against the breast of a synthetic mattress topper.

And when you whisper, ‘I do’ to the soul, allow that last gritty knot of tension to ease – and glide into velvety layers of sleep.

But darling,

whatever you do, do not tuck your feelings so far into the depths, that they will never reawaken to see the light of day.