You carried me-
through cereal dawns,
sleepy Sundays,
Clutching small rituals
I carry you-
brown, warm sun in your belly.
It would seem
I cannot let you go
lest we both try
I know,
to break each other to pieces.
Your handle tells one story-
a map of how things
split
and
bonded, set
like
a
promise
blue-collar Kintsugi seams
that say
we will hold.
Another,
recent heart-shaped fracture
bit your lip.
We mend together…
ironically.
You keep the coffee, and
the coffee keeps me.
Heat between my palms,
heat that remembers other mugs,
other mornings, other days
where his time never sat still.
You clink and confess in the quiet:
late-night laughter, small truces, slammed doors, the soft sibilance of younger “us.”
I tuck those sweet syllables
into the hollow of your glaze.
The repairs are portraits,
a thumbprint in two-part epoxy-
our breath in a yet-set solid.
You are record and vessel-
warm when I need
a stubborn, salvaged scripture
of what used to be.
Too soon in solitude,
I will teach my hands to
hold the halves and
breathe them whole.
I will continue to fix.
Edge-sanding stubborn ridges,
smoothing the story into shape.
I will continue to rebuild:
the mug, the memory, the mutual hurt,
as if clay could close the past,
I will continue to mend
-on my own if the future deems-
until the sharp shards draw my blood or
the minuscule pieces themselves
finally seem
to be irredeemable.
I resolve
not only to keep my coffee warm
but to keep the map intact,
bonded in common gold.