Cup of Coffee

It’s gloomy and cold. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones, as the lack of light slithers into your soul.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I’ve been walking around all day, my feet hurt and the shoes chafe, but I just can’t stop walking.
I’ve been haunting our streets, our places, because I don’t know where else to go. They were ours, but now they’re just mine and I don’t have anywhere else to go.
The bars, the coffee shop, the movie theatre we went to once, the supermarket.

I walked past the bar where we used to shoot pool and throw darts and laugh.
I walked past the pub where we sat, knees bumping, heads together, murmuring thoughts, hopes, secrets.
I walked past the coffee shop we used to have breakfast in. Pancakes, waffles, eggs, fruit. And coffee.
I walked past the movie theatre we went to once and never dared go back.  Where your hand trailed over my leg, up and in and we would have been in unfathomable trouble if  we’d been found.
I walked passed the supermarket where you had been pushing the cart, talking a little too loudly about sex.

I walked past all these places hoping to see you, but I guess they’re just mine now.

I walked until I came to your street, your car, your house. The lights burning, you’re home, but I can’t go there anymore.
I guess this is just yours now.

~ ~*~ ~

I took up smoking, I missed the way you smell. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, the smoke masking the sent of semen and sweat.
I can’t remember his name, any of their names. They’re just something to numb the pain, quell the loneliness. Like the alcohol at the bar before I take them home. Beer, gin, vodka, tequila, rum, whiskey but never ever scotch.
I drink until it’s hard to make out faces, but they all look like you if I squint and tilt my head just right.
I used to avoid our bars, not wanting you to see me like this. Dirty, drunken whore, but I gave it up because I guess they’re my bars now, and you found your own.

~ ~*~ ~

I lay in my bed with your t-shirt pressed to my face, the tears have dried, and the sobbing stopped and my head aches. My friends have been calling, but I threw the phones at the wall. The doorbell rang and the wood creaked under insistent pounding, but I just pulled the covers higher and the pillow over my head and passed out from lack of oxygen.
Someone foregoes the polite and the etiquette and just breaks in.
He sits down on the bed and strokes my back for a while. He doesn’t say anything, so I pretend it’s you.
The sobbing returns and I can’t breathe for all the longing pushing it’s way out.
When I quiet, he starts to murmur about getting me out of bed to shower, change, eat something.
He pulls on my shoulder, he pulls on my leg, he pulls me to my feet and manhandles me away from the bed. I let him half carry me into the bathroom and I lean against the wall when he lets go to turn on the shower. I’m not moving so he strips me down and pushes me under the spray. Twenty minutes later he strips down himself and steps in, soaping me up and rinsing me off.
He pulls on my clothes and takes me to the kitchen, sitting me down in a chair.
When he hands me a cup I push it away violently, brown liquid on the floor.

“No! No. I don’t drink coffee anymore.”

~ ~*~ ~

You took me to this coffee place I’ve never been to before, you seemed to know your way around and I wondered why our usual place wouldn’t do.
You order coffee for us and nothing more, sitting us down in a booth with a view of the street.
The spoon clinks a rhythm as you stir the liquid even though you haven’t added anything.
I wrap my hands around the cup and stare at the white, black and metallic clink. Something is shifting, moving, dying. I imagine I can hear people crying a world away while I listen to you clink and stay silent.

You tell me that it’s over, that I really must have known. That we wanted different things in life, that we’d grown apart.
You sit there spouting clichés and tired words to soothe, and I try to count our eyelashes, until they blur and I can’t see through the tears.
You grab my hand and let it go, telling me to calm down, saying that it’s really best this way because I always loved you so much and you never really loved me at all.