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Coffee

by Wheeler Light

Too much of a good thing I call breakfast. We meet for coffee and talk. For a bit, it’s warm out. The same conversation again. You pull the ripcord saying you have to go to the work you don’t have today but it’s a good excuse. I don’t call you out on lying and play a good husband, a good patron to your emotions. I let you have them uninterrupted like a blizzard you release on yourself. Everyone around us is listening to music and we’re listening to the silence before each response wondering if it will be filled. You shake a snowglobe and it is winter again, the winter you keep in your pocket, the snow-blind homeostasis of affection. You wrap me in winter. After being cold for so long, one becomes numb. Every night you lay next to me I get hypothermia and fall asleep.

Wheeler Light currently lives in Boulder CO. His work has appeared in Bottlecap Press, Hobart, and Yes, Poetry, among others. He will be representing Denver at the 2017 National Poetry Slam. He is an editor at Milk Journal.

Lead image: “Coffee” (via Flickr user Epicantus)