Blanketed

Sometimes the blankets are warm from having been slept on just minutes before. This happens when someone gets up, gathers up his blankets in a bundle, and makes a beeline to the storage room. They seem to be saying, here’s my bed. I’m done with it. Take it. It feels strange receiving still-warm blankets, an action too intimate to occur between strangers but that is what we do.

Other times, the blankets are folded and stacked, cool as if displayed on a counter in a department store. Always the largest blanket is on the bottom and the smaller ones are centered atop, the corners aligned. Nothing haphazard for the people who fold their own blankets. Maybe it’s a message they want to send; we are more careful and thoughtful than we seem here.

Both the gatherers and the folders have spent the night sleeping on the floor of a cavernous…