My Poetry: Coffee house Blues

Coffee House Blues

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You cup the coffee
like a soldier
would holy water
ahead of war.
I see you take
it without milk
now,
but you’ve not really changed
that much.
Your smile is just the same,
but your once blue eyes
now match the grey
in your hair.

I notice the white mark
on your ring finger
and wonder why you called
again.
I gave you everything
I could,
placed my bruised heart
in the palm of your hands
all those years ago,
gave you everything
but my soul
yet it could not sate
the appetite
for what you felt
you really deserved.

I watch the couple
to our left
eye each other
like we used to
when our hands
were warm with desire
before a younger lover
stole your faith in love.
You tell me his name,
and how he taught you
to ride horses
and how you bought an ivory dress
to fulfil your dreams
and how he left
to chase his.

The words fall
like bitter brine
on hope’s parched crops
as you raise the red cup
to your rose lips.
But I cannot explain
or comprehend,
the ways I missed you,
then,
sat with those thoughts
through five lonely winters
and how each one
remains incomplete
and complex, still;
each one merging into the other
till all I understand
is the rain clouding the window
and the solitary sound
as you clink down the cup.
So when you called again,
yesterday,
I couldn’t allow the salves
and ointment
that once were your hands
to aleve the years
lost to someone else.

You cup the coffee
like a baby
as I say we could never
do it again
and this time
I leave you.