Free Verse · Love
Two Cups
Marriage is two cups
on one small shelf —
not matching, never matching,
but reached for every morning
by the same four hands;
and love is not the porcelain,
love is the reaching.
Original poem © QuillOak — personal sharing is permitted.
“Two Cups” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/two-cups
Quick facts
- Poem
- Two Cups
- Poet
- The QuillOak Editors
- Length
- 7 lines
- Form
- Free Verse
- Themes
- Love
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
- 7 lines · 2 stanzas of 2–5 lines
- 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.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a free verse, 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 originalTwo Cups, 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 c4c94e76d93739be…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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