Family Room

You don’t want to be here
so you roll up this world into a ball,
cocoon it in your husband’s lap.
Perhaps you’re asleep, exhausted with pleading.
There is little we need to say, relieved
as you stretch out in the sunlight
that beckons through holes
in the screened window.
Perhaps you’re listening
as we chat around you.
You look so peaceful,
those worries filed away:
the lists of things to do,
the safety of your children,
the wretched of the earth
who need your clothes,
the persecuted church,
the coming Messiah;
too much reality
even for you.