Safety is something we usually notice only when it's missing, and mayothegalileo's «under the covers» is built around that absence. We are given no date and no backstory, and the poem doesn't need them. A speaker tries to explain their own behaviour (hiding, sleeplessness, a silenced mouth, an urge to bite) and keeps arriving at the same root: "i don't feel safe." The central idea is how a person who is made to feel unsafe over and over can end up blaming themselves for it.
The poem is organised around a refrain. "and it's because i don't feel safe" appears three times, like someone patiently answering a question nobody has asked kindly. The first time, the consequence is geography: "not in this town / not at my mother's / not at my father's / not in any bed i call my own." Watch how the list narrows, from a town to two family homes to a single bed. Every place that should be a refuge is crossed off until the most private one goes too. That makes the title bitterly double. "Under the covers" is where you go to hide, but the poem says even there is not safe.
The second refrain brings behaviours: trying to hide, wearing "any clothing thrice my size," feeling that "everything i do makes me want to bite." The oversized clothing is a neat paradox, since the speaker makes themselves smaller by wearing something bigger. Biting is the opposite instinct, the reflex of a cornered animal. Between concealment and aggression, we see a person with very few defences. Sound reinforces the mood. The long "i" runs through "hide," "size," "bite," "night" and "wide," giving the unrhymed free verse a tight, repeating chime, as though the same fear keeps ringing.
The third refrain introduces "they": "they keep me awake at night / they keep my mouth from opening wide." The pronoun has no antecedent. It could mean people, memories or dread, and the poem won't say. That vagueness is effective, because the threat feels everywhere and nameless. The mouth that cannot open wide works literally and figuratively, since it suggests a speaker who cannot protest, explain or cry out.
Then the pattern breaks. "and perhaps it's because of me" borrows the refrain's "because," but points it inward instead of outward. Notice the grammar of what follows: "when they believe me to be pitiful / and perhaps i am." Someone else's judgement is absorbed in a single line, and the speaker concedes rather than defends. It is a quiet, believable portrait of how blame travels, from the people who cause fear to the person who feels it.
The final two lines are the darkest and the most carefully pitched: "seeing as this body can't even harm itself properly / its always had someone else finish the job with a flourish." The poem never spells out what this means, so any reading is an inference, but the lines seem to point to self-harm and to harm done by others. The tone is sardonic. "Properly" treats harm like a chore done badly, and "with a flourish" turns another person's cruelty into a showy performance. This flippant register reads like armour, a joke told to keep the pain at arm's length, and it makes the confession harder to hear.
The form fits all this. Everything is lowercase, even "i," so the speaker appears literally small on the page. There is almost no punctuation, so the lines run on without a rest, and even the apostrophe in "its" is dropped, as in a message typed in a hurry. The poem ends on its bleakest image without consolation or resolution.
What makes the poem significant is that it shows the logic of fear from the inside. Hiding, sleeplessness and anger are presented as consequences, each one introduced by "because," rather than as flaws or failings. Its sharpest insight is that unsafety does not stop at the person's surroundings. It can seep into their self-image until they wonder if they deserve it. The poem deals with self-harm and abuse, so if it feels close to home, a trusted adult is the right person to talk to.