Sometimes it’s the ones we never meet that get to us most deeply...
I sit at an empty table.
Empty, save for a quarter inch
Of cold coffee in an abandoned
White Styrofoam cup with
Bright red lipstick stains —
Bright red as Santa Claus or a new infection.
Those bright red lips are gone — in fact
All lips are as gone from me as cold coffee goes;
Gone as they can get.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash