At the Airport by Catherine Zickgraf

I bring our children with chestnut hair.
We mixed ourselves making them, saw we fared
well in an untested marriage.  For a decade, thin cotton
wrapped the bed.  At night, all poverty forgotten.

But we separated again—he went to war, mortars of nails
and oven air.  At home, I handled homework and ailments.
I knew from his last tour what would happen:
he returned changed.  I changed, too.  As simple in the end

as wanting my own bed.  Our high frame, sheets a fair
sea of pale blues, a satin defense, but I’m ready to share.  
In our arms at the airport, we hold, we hold.
We go home to re-imagine us growing old.  

*Previously published in From the Depths, Objects of Our Desire, June 2014

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Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to write poetry and fold laundry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 

Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com