Micki Blenkush

Two Ships, Long Marriage

What, if anything, can be said when you arrive
at 4:00 a.m. to our bed where I have stalked alone
into dreams I would have preferred to share
but instead you’ve lingered
in the unheated basement,
drafting from your lucid mind
plans for a workshop
you began to sketch in the corner of our den
during a movie selected by our daughter
(which, by our simple glance five minutes in,
we both could have lived without)
and I, who’d long lain awake in menopausal steam
thinking poems I’d like to write,
now silently welcome you
to whatever warmth
I’ll leave behind.

Micki Blenkush is striving to spend less of her life waiting.