Black Coffee

The next time we met
I tried to turn it into an accident
but even then I couldn’t fool you.
You gave me that small smirk
I’d grow to hate. Your signature
stare, stolen from a movie.

Then that almost-whisper
that tells me you’ll soon
become a monument.
I tried not to look up
from the menu.

You waited tables, I watched
the clock. When the time came you took me
out behind the Dumpster. The smell of grease
thickened the air. We found one another
like trees in a storm, violent and awesome.

The footsteps came, not like the ripples
on the surface of a pond, but the stones
that sink to the bottom. You pulled away
as violently as you’d come.

I asked you “what’s wrong?”
You whispered, “No one knows.”
I put my hand on your shoulder:
like punching through gauze.
“It’s okay. I’ll wait.”
That time, at least, I meant it.

Soon, the footsteps retreated
and you came back into me.
Embrace felt emptier, somehow,
drained of color. But you were so new,
and your eyes hid so much from me still.
I let go and hung on tight. I whispered:

“I’ll let you write your name
on my tongue in cursive if you promise
to tell me a secret like you love me,
but only in the dark. Kiss me,
and we might make it out alive.”

Chris Costello is a writer, editor, and educator from Central New York. His work has appeared in Stone Canoe, Ink and Voices, and Protean Magazine, among others.