This week’s poem captures a small, intimate war that happens inside a marriage.

Rachel Zucker is the author of 10 books, including “SoundMachine,” which was just released by Wave Books. She is the founder and host of the podcast Commonplace and mother to three sons.

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By Rachel Zucker

Once there was a jackdaw black as soot with a bright eye, a voice like a broken bell, and some nasty habits she couldn’t help. More and more she looked like her mother. Same expressions, similar fears and aspirations. This summer everyone seemed able to hurt her feelings even with small offenses. The husband hated it when she cried. Her scrunched wet face made him feel helpless and feeling helpless made him angry and his anger made him mean. She would then accuse him of being unhappy and decide that she was in this — meaning life — all alone and couldn’t rely on him for anything and for days would go about dry-eyed with a hard aloofness, her chin slightly raised, arms crossed over her chest. But these were the feathers of other birds and neither she nor the husband had any patience for finery, which they both considered pretentious and inauthentic. So they’d kerfuffle and say hurtful things and all her carefully assembled armature would fall away. Then she would appear again as the ordinary jackdaw he loved.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2014 Rachel Zucker. It appeared originally in “The Pedestrians” (Wave Books, 2014) and appears here by permission of the author. Submissions to the Deep Water column are open through the end of October. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/programs/deep-water.