Lyric Poem · Love
He Checks the Locks
You check the doors, you check the stove,
you check the windows twice;
you'd never call it tenderness —
you'd call it "being precise."
But I know why I sleep so well
while wind and weather roam:
the last thing every day you do
is make sure I'm safe home.
Original poem © QuillOak — personal sharing is permitted.
“He Checks the Locks” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/he-checks-the-locks
Quick facts
- Poem
- He Checks the Locks
- Poet
- The QuillOak Editors
- Length
- 8 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Rhyming Poems
- Themes
- Love, For Him
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 8 lines · 2 quatrains
- Line length
- Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Original QuillOak text. Personal sharing is permitted; other reuse requires permission.
- Author record
- The QuillOak Editorstoday
- Source record
- QuillOak originalHe Checks the Locks, authored for QuillOak by The Quillery
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 5acb282c895ef267…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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