A Universe of Love
The way you cup your coffee
between both palms on winter mornings—
I keep that quiet ritual
as scripture in my breath.
Your thumb draws circles on the rim,
steam curling like your hair after rain.
In that held moment before speech,
I taste the salt of almost losing you.
Last Tuesday, you laughed
at my awful quantum joke;
your shoulders shook like aftershocks,
and the kitchen tiles swayed beneath us.
You glance at the scar above your brow—
a childhood fall you never name.
My lips find that stubborn silence
and kiss it into something like forgiveness.
When you sleep, your breathing changes—
becomes the soft tick of the bedside clock
counting moments I refuse to spend
on anything but your pulse against my wrist.
I lie awake memorizing these rhythms,
knowing morning will gather
the way you say my name
while still half in dream.
Your fingers reach across the table;
sunlight pools on white porcelain,
and the space between your hand and mine
is wide as the echo after a bell.
It holds all I cannot speak—
how your laugh makes coffee cups tremble,
how your absence turns each doorway
into a room I cannot enter.
Stop—
before the day forgets how softly it began.
In the ordinary Tuesday light,
you butter toast and hum off-key,
and the kitchen holds its breath,
like dawn learning to rise.
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