When we have a good tussle (lights on), we both sleep better.
Afterward, I always drift into a deep, drunken sleep that I wouldn't
wake from willingly.
She, on the other hand, is always up and down the carpeted stairs
adjusting things we knocked over or planning some grandiose
scheme for a better life by way of imagined parlor or botanical garden.
It's always her who sees a woman corner-eyed passing
through the unlit kitchen or silhouetted in porch light
just to be gone a moment later.
She'll wake me in a stupor claiming she saw a lady
with a face likened to a clay bust that was never finished.
That is all nonsense, of course, just her night-follies.
She harbors a deep suspicion of my youth and remembers things
I scarcely recall as more than flirts and teases.
I'll hear a shriek; I'll go to her.
There she'll stand weak-kneed pointing
at nothing down the hallway.
We’ll discuss it for too long (lights off), and I’ll be up till the birds caw.
Glancing at a coat or chair-back like these things are really some lady
just watching me. Staring at me with a satisfied look on her non-face
knowing that her work is finished here.