So this is where we have landed,
this gray quiet in every other
afternoon where for one hour
skin slips as easily into silence
as it once slipped from grace,
where between duties to a son
and a family we sit and read
together like old bookends
turned inward, where in this
brief hollow with your bare feet
wrapped in a wool sweater
and settled onto my lap
like kittens, my hand on your leg,
we tell ourselves without speaking
that in these moments spiced
with a cup of hot mint tea,
others who have more
rarely have this much.