Coffeehouse Blues

"Some tact wouldn't kill you,"

I say, as we sit and stare each other down

over a cup of coffee

--the good kind---

--per her orders---

Black, no sugar.

I know how she feels about sugar.

"So, tell me," she says,

"Are you seeing anyone?"

….Anyone. What a statement.

She knows it's no one.

My shallow breathing halts me for a moment.

It's a good thing I don't live between breaths;

I'd surely die from lack of oxygen.

If I could pull the roots from my hair,

I would count them

like children do the petals of sunflowers.

"She loves me; she loves me not.

She loves me, she loves me…"

Maybe she will love me somewhere in there.

More importantly,

maybe I will love myself.

She pushes the coffee toward me,

--black, like the pits in sunflowers,

--black, like her hair,

--black, like her eyes, the day she stopped really looking at me.

Maybe it never scared me before

because nothing really scares you

when you've already seen it in yourself.

She asks me again if I'm seeing anyone.

I'd like to say myself.

But I haven't really looked

in a puddle for days.

Puddles give the best reflections:

Deep, but distorted just enough to feel alittle more digestible,

--more so than mirrors,

which are flat,

and true,

and bright.

If I look in mirrors,

I make sure to turn off at least one light first.

"Drink the coffee," she says,

like it's some sort of prize,

like maybe I could find myself there:

Amidst the black grinds without the sugar.

I wish I could throw sugar into puddles,

freeze it and mount it onto my walls.

The sugar would look like sprinkles

or confetti.

Maybe I could digest the picture then.

Maybe the glitter would finally make me feel adorned enough to be pretty,

to be worn,

to be absent of the thing that I feel.

What makes this?

This fear?

What force is it that first birthed it into a person?

She doesn't seem to know.

Or care.

She keeps sipping her coffee,

urging me to drink.

But that is not the thirst that I feel.

Nor is it the quenching I am looking for.