Prose Poem · Family

The Kitchen at Night

by The QuillOak Editors

Reading room

1The house has gone to sleep around me and the kitchen keeps its one small light.

2The refrigerator hums the way it has hummed through every house I have ever lived in.

3My mother stood here, and her mother, each of them alone with the late hour and the quiet.

4I pour the glass of water I came down for and do not drink it; I just hold the cold of it.

5This is the hour the house belongs to no one, and so, briefly, it belongs to me.

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“The Kitchen at Night” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/the-kitchen-at-night-prose-poem

Quick facts

Poem: The Kitchen at Night
Poet: The QuillOak Editors
Length: 5 lines
Form: Prose Poem
Themes: Family, Peace, Childhood

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: 5 lines · one 5-line stanza
End rhyme: No regular perfect end rhyme. The poem may still be using slant rhyme, assonance, or internal echo, which this check does not score.
Line length: Mostly 23-syllable lines.

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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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 originalThe Kitchen at Night, 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 804cdf0fadf3b063…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Prose Poem Family Peace Childhood

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