Red worry

Suits and Sandals

You sitting on your recovered Persian rug
on the slate kitchen floor
in the pre-dawn dimness
stroking the cat
gentling your fear
in rum and coke morning
before facing the suits
without sandals

— Smith, 2010

Wrote this when I woke in a dark bed alone, went looking for my wife, and found her sitting in the dark on the kitchen floor, wildly worried about the speech she had to give to a room full of would be web design customers later that day.