When we're old and grey

He rises at dawn, tries to shuffle silently

toward the kitchen kettle

Two mugs

World’s Greatest Dad

Mrs. Always Right

Two tea bags

Leaves the cupboard door open

Eats a forbidden biscuit

A voice floats down the stair

“You left the loo seat up again.”

Ah, his morning hymn.

He nods with the solemnity of one who’s been

defeated in campaigns of cushion arrangement

Dishwasher stacking

and diary inadequacy.

“I’ve told you, don’t leave dishes in the sink”

marching past, wielding a sock

like a banner of conquest.

He once dreamed of dragons. Now,

His most fearsome foe is Tupperware

without a matching lid

“It’s there right before your eyes”

She won the battle of the TV remote long ago

Didn’t know she wanted to renovate old houses

Or auction antiques

When the news is on.

Conversations cleverly coded

“I wonder what the weather’s like in Tenerife at Christmas”

“Do you want to go to the coast at the weekend?”

In an imagined world he says

“Warm”

“I’m watching the rugby”.

She’s the wind in his sails,

the GPS in his life journey,

and the unavoidable tutorial of his existence.

Yet still, he smiles.

Because love, apparently,

is the art of apologizing for things

You didn’t know you didn’t know

She wakes to the sound of him clattering cutlery,

A domestic cymbal crash in the symphony of

“Why don’t you get your hearing tested. You’re going deaf?”

The drawer saga continues—

One left slightly open

One with a trapped sock trying to escape

War crimes in her book of unwritten rules.

He means well, the poor old soul,

But yesterday’s chores are half done

He’s left the bread out again

And cheese no cling film

With surgical precision, she recalibrates the cushions—

Decorative, not functional,

Though he continues to shuffle them

Misdealing to prop up sciatica

She wonders how one man

Cannot find a sock

While staring directly at it.

He nods obediently as she lists

Today’s minor betrayals:

The toothpaste massacre,

The dishwasher debacle

The crockery crisis

And yet—when he smiles that lopsided smile,

When he says “Nice cup of tea, dear.

And a chocolate biscuit.”

Remembered without hints...

She softens.

Because love, apparently,

Is the fine art of managing

Another adult’s nonsense

With a half-exasperated grin.