The first great poet
was Lot’s wife,
because she dared to look back
and understood, for a second,
why gaining distance from pain
is important.

Lot was the second,
and he didn’t even know it
until the day he could bear
salt on his goat meat
again.

I washed dishes this morning,
then made coffee. Right now
I’m waiting for the dark brown scent
of it to come alive, and I realize that
the scent isn’t dark or brown,
and the only reason I say that it is
is because coffee is dark and brown
and there’s no way to describe a scent
without relying on comparison,
and on other senses,
and all of it is about the past,
how coffee reminds me of past things,
of how a sink full of dirty dishes smells,
it reminds me of fear and sloth
and those days when I couldn’t
get off the couch
to address anything,
and I’d go out for coffee instead of
making some.

Hearing other people in the diner
talk about work and babies and money
just made me think about the couch so I’d go home
and sit on it some more, and I never bent down
to smell the couch, covering my own scent
with deodorant and spraying the air to remove
the scent of cigarettes and cat and old me,
until I just couldn’t stand myself anymore
and I’d go back out for more coffee, a beer,
a shot, anything to cover the smell.

I know I made it to here
by repeating a story
I wrote from whatever
I can remember…

but this morning,
I got up.
I washed a sink full of dishes.
I brewed coffee.
It’s ready,
and all the cups
are clean.