Book at Bedtime
You are,
in that moment,
longer than a minute,
a time without gauges,
under glasses of wine,
weighting you;
having read a part-story
to one child,
and your other half
is a floor below,
and you consider
the stairs down,
to where muttered-TV,
with guffawed additions,
fills the stairwell,
and that climbing back-up
now feels irrupt:
so stay there,
in the bedroom,
with a leggy glass
of wine,
and write the lines:
‘I shall survive’,
a thousand-thousand times.