The Coffee You Bought Me

Tonight you’re thinking of my hands pressing hard on your ribs

you’re in pain but you don’t say anything

The same way you drop a big sugar cube in my coffee and overcook my eggs every morning

and I don’t say anything. When I think of you I always think of bright mornings, but last time we walked the cold city streets they were also bleak and its people mad

and I was chased out of there.

Do we simply stare at what’s terrible and accept it? We haven’t been brave for a while now, fighting all the wrong battles and giving our freedom away so readily. Hungry for a change inciting riots and flames, obedient and quiet - a blur of forces making it impossible to even think about love. What’s the big deal about love anyway? We sit side by side watching TV, the book on the table is about time consciousness and you keep asking for a proof that I am real. You keep trying to convince me to stay, pouring endless amounts of wine.

The station. The goodbye. The coffee you bought me.

I arrive in LA and I don’t see you at the airport, of course you aren’t here but I still expected you to appear all excited and ashamed for having followed me. I am glad that you haven’t since the bright Californian Sun nearly compels me to forget my Christmas time with you but then I remember

our mornings.

In my mind you are crying because you think you are weak and hollow and nothing matters anymore. You are also smiling and crying in a way that makes me both agitated and fascinated and I begin to search for more things that annoy me about you. Oh, I find so plenty but I still buy a flight back.

You lie at night in your small bed listening to the terrible music your upstairs neighbour blasts and you hope she will change it, you wait

but she doesn’t, and I haven’t messaged you today: the world doesn’t make sense. This silly and dystopian, ‘on the verge’ world will have to pause all of its nonsense for a while. Honey, I’m flying.