Marriage, with children

After the two a.m. feeding you enter
my mind, invited by memories of Sundays
spent fingering patterns on my breasts
and belly until hunger lured you to the kitchen where
you heated a pan, positioned strips of bacon and covered
your nakedness with a bibbed apron. When you saw me come
into the room wrapping my solid, sweaty body with a sheer robe
the apron tented, the bacon sizzled and the eggs didn’t crack.

Now, you penetrate my reverie with a sigh, stand
at the foot of our bed, your eyes circled dark as mine,
scan the patterns of stretch marks on my breasts
and flabby belly and, as if you’d read my mind,
you ease onto our marriage bed, slide fingertips and lips
from toes to thighs, hips to lips, making memory until our baby cries.

c. Bernadette L. Wagner