postcard poem

[heroic couplets]

Tonight I will make dinner for our guests.
Clear off the table, and lay out our best
porcelain plates in shades from blue to black.
We will sit and eat, and rest our weary backs
that worked all day, for hours, to cook or clean.
Then go outside, under the sky and a smoke screen
that our guests exhale from their lips stained red
from the wine that they drank while eating our bread.
The conversation will slow,
and the two guests will go,
and we will retire to our bed for the night -
the one piled with three blankets, two of them white.