Brewing Coffee

Often I live a life of otherness. Each thought, fleeting. Each choice, brand new. I am dancing poorly and alone in our kitchen. Space 101: Northwest Music Radio. Holding an unread, paperback Dharma Bums in a right hand,

I think of dipping instead the skin of it into the coffee's boiling water. Just to see something. Books and people say they do shocking things just to feel something but I know better. They do it to see something.

See if they can, see if they mean it. Mean something, mean anything. I wrap my hand around the hot mug instead and hold it there. A dampened alternative that shouts into a hollow stump, "You never meant it!"

She comes in, giggling at the sight of me. Goggles hiding my eyes, boxers hiding my scars. Lounged about our kitchen stool in the dark, holding barefoot my mug. She kisses my nose and leaves me there.

I ponder this, if only for a moment. Predictably fleeting. I wonder if she is okay. When I kiss her I often miss her lips for it is teeth she truly bares.