Katherine's Coffeehouse

I I was of two minds, now Returned to one: You do not deserve Anyone.

I was this many years old when I learned what an opus number means, how chronological order is not always set by composers, but by scholars, historians, and academics. And having looked up the word, as I am wont to do, having taken the head-first swan

Shall I tell you I am disabled? That I no longer can fend for myself? Or shall I tell you I now write the poetry you mocked me for because it does not pay the bills?

Let’s set the record straight. I do not claim to know what god might be, nor do I entirely get gestalt.

I did not know what I would write this morning as the treeline got etched in wisps of ivory blond—until I remembered I did not get to properly grieve you. Not really, anyway. Sure, I wrote you a poem. Sure, I teared up now and again, like I am now when I think of everything you did and offered, but mostly, selfishly, I miss your listening,

What would you rather hear? That six or seven or twelve times or more I actually had ideation, or that I walked away, instead, unharmed? That I

It’s not that I shoulder a navy pack on my disintegrating back. It’s not that I have swallowed the kind of pills that retch even the rage out until

Oh to be unconditionally loved when dead, division dissolved by the peaceful inevitable. Oh to the victory that made us one, the blood of battle and repair no longer questioned as worthwhile, immune to “what if?” in its sad reality, replaced by “what is” and “what was.”

I return to that Place of Peace, and the wisdom of ancient things, the one that reintroduced itself

See, you were the only Black kid in the whole damn school, and the teacher had to split us up because of how hard we laughed together.