Coffee

She lifts the cup – the bland china clank still

above the morning murmur of the hurried customers –

to her lips only for her pen to be stilled

by the surprising absence of content –

it's like finding out one's cigarette's out

even though they're designed to burn out –

running out of coffee remains uncanny –

the story stalled until the next gulp –

time measured in punctincting china –

halted mid-air staring at the blackbrown ring –

granular negative of a near-perfect eclipse –

blended shadows of distilled words,

bitter if left to sit on out for too long –

in one movement she stands up, pushes back

the stool and lays down the cup –

the day stretches outside the bay window

people after cars after people after cars –

queueing up again – keeping watch on her things

– her things – in a haloed blur on the table –

the pockmarked, unnerved, unsmoothed wood –

the tinnital wave of the conversation floating

like bobbing flotsam in the middle of the café,

she feels aloof, stranded, a standstill runaway,

an exile without a justification, a fraud almost

though she has money, a job, club cards –

been mocked for the black hair on her brown arms –

more disturbing to her is the pulp of her skin

loosening so visibly when she drinks water –

as anyone she is the sum of her memories,

slave to them – ditching one means losing a finger –

– her things – her coffee – essential and trivial –

the café, the people, the cars, the china

keep her head down and blank and running,

the noise motions her in the here and the now –

the threads adjusted, the cup filled, the ink stayed –

disambiguates the scars from the words –

while the bland china still clink – while she lifts the cup.