The coffee got left on
with little in the pot.
It looks like there’s a fog inside the carafe
where the fumes baked into a film on the glass.
Such a small disaster as that
cannot be allowed to stop the morning.
My lover has taught me
how to clean such grime with ice cubes and kosher salt:
combine them inside; swirl them around;
dump it and wipe the glass; then
rinse thoroughly
and make a new pot.
I do that and as it’s brewing
I think about what else she has taught me:
how I am growing older and how I am not;
how to sit and be still;
where I am failing and how
I may recover. How to be myself with her,
and how not to be lost to myself
when I am not.
That last is the lesson
that came the hardest and
remains the hardest. As hard,
perhaps, as a film of hot fog burned
onto old glass — but with her
and with the alchemy I’ve learned from her,
no such small disaster as that
can keep us
from sitting together each morning, still
and quiet, over coffee in the shade
of the living room before we raise the blinds
and let in the hard light from outside.