Inhale.
Exhale.
Let your jaw relax.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Listen to the soft sound of the cat eating wet cat food.
Notice that it’s your own reflection you see in the dark window.
Listen to the white noise of appliances.
Hear the gentle rain outside
and know that you are safe.
Wait for your husband to come home
with groceries and take-out Thai soup.
Try to write something, maybe a poem.
Notice how good it is to wait for a husband
who comes home with groceries and take-out Thai soup.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Let your lungs expand and then contract.
Watch the blunt fingers of your capable hands
dart over and land on the little squares on the keyboard.
Keep waiting for your husband, or a poem,
whichever comes first.
Dvora Robinson is a writer and visual artist living in Portland, Oregon. Her work is published in the anthology Love Letters in Poetic Verse (Southern Arizona Press), in The Post Grad Journal, and in Literature Today.