Loft Bed

by Noelle Sterne

In the two-room, graduate-school apartment, one-eighth of a brownstone whose only virtue was eleven-foot ceilings, my new husband, despondent at the little space, designed and with a cousin built a loft bed. At first, I thought this innovative, creative, even genius. The thick wooden planks were solid and rich and the matching ladder naughtily bohemian for staid doctoral candidates; he was elated. But making the bed required the skills and muscle tone of an advanced yoga master. And during sleep, if in the night a pimple broke through on your nose, it grazed the ceiling. One morning, suspecting the rest of my life could be seeing him through a succession of impossible highs and lows, I climbed down the ladder and walked out.

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Noelle Sterne is a writer, editor, writing coach and consultant. Stemming from her long consulting practice with doctoral candidates, she is currently completing a psychological-spiritual handbook to help doctoral candidates finish their dissertations (finally). She is the author of "First You Find Your Desk: Start Writing and Keep Writing with Less Agony and More Joy."