Senseless beneath the bed sheets,
I lingered into lateness because,
you said, I needed my rest and so,
before it sounded, silenced the alarm.
And so, because I’d overslept,
we began the day with an hour
of high-profile anger, as though
this were part of our morning ritual:
shower, shave, get the coffee going, then fight,
the baby deposited in her high chair
like the pile of clothes I would now
not have time to take to the cleaner’s.
Her face grew grave in the face
of our loudness, watching us stir tempests
into our coffee cups, her mouth a rose
closed upon the shrapnel of her stunned silence
as you slammed your way through
the making of toast and scrambled eggs
and I sniped back, cheap shots
about dirty shirts and misdirected kindness
and what alarm clocks are for, the baby
trying to catch my eye with a smile,
the coffee cooling in the pot’s dark pool—
as though we had all the time there was,
as though there would always be coffee
in a room with its four walls intact,
as though the baby would always be there
in her chair by the door.