Katherine's Coffeehouse

Still with eyes closed, wrapped up in blankets

It begins with, “Don’t you believe in company loyalty?”

We clutch a bit now for sleep through the night, choose sharper tipped verbs, phrases, questions of status quo, but are handed cliches

It’s complicated, really, it began so long ago, while bent over a bin of gourmet ice cream, scooping it out for a customer: “Don’t you believe in company loyalty?” And I had to tell him, no. “I am not loyal to groups,” I said. “I am loyal to people.”

he asks me why poetry, especially before coffee

It flies across my bathroom floor, sliver of a creature,

I am here to remind you: Nothing you made was for us.

The complex backstory ends at my short relationship with photosynthesis. I was okay

The last thing I drank was clear. The number of times I’ve had to repeat this reproduces, every

My father effused, everything is nothing,