A cup of longing
Your coffee cup still waits
on the kitchen table—
the one you slammed down
that Tuesday morning,
coffee splattering our crossword
with goodbye.
**Week One:** I scrub the stain
with bleach and fury,
curse your name
into the empty rooms.
**Week Six:** I catch myself
setting two plates for dinner,
pause halfway to the cabinet,
my hand suspended
between habit and surrender.
**Week Ten:** The dentist calls—
your name still echoes
in their appointment book.
I hang up,
imagining you somewhere
forgotten.
**Week Fifteen:** I find
your shopping list
tucked in *Beloved*—
milk, oranges, that good bread—
your handwriting
still believing
in our future tense.
*French toast this weekend,* you'd written—
and laughed when I burned the edges.
**Week Twenty:** I'm learning
to sleep diagonally,
to claim the whole bed
as mine,
but still I wake
reaching for the shape
you left in cool sheets.
Freedom tastes like guilt.
**Week Twenty-Five:** The barista
at our coffee shop
stops asking
*Where's your better half?*
I realize I've been coming here
alone for months,
ordering black coffee
instead of your lavender oat latte,
dusted with too much cinnamon.
**Week Thirty:** I can say
*my apartment*
instead of *ours*
without my voice
breaking.
**Week Thirty-Five:** I carry
your coffee cup
to the garden,
fill it with soil
and basil seeds.
You always said
I should grow something.
The green shoots
push through—
stubborn as hope,
persistent as your humming
at the sink.
I water them
with what's left
of missing you,
and discover
I have been growing
all along.
I pour the last of us
into the earth
and watch it bloom.
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