blowing off steam

The coffee is hot and the air is cool. The steam relents briefly and returns, the instinctual soup spoon gesture built into the ritual. The bright uncaring sun, the you know how to whistle lips pursed just so, the ripples unfurling upon the ink black surface loosing vapor with every huff and puff. The little pig ache a blade in the belly, evergreens and birdsong and the same story all day long. I lift the steel steaming cup to my lips, and almost without thinking, I blow.

Again the calendar turns without a kindness. Again the moon is full to mock and loom. I am all scratching and habits, Mifune as Yojimbo, Bogart as old Dobbsy. More craft than method, more muscle memory than sight read, I run my lines constantly. Every step I take, every table I turn, this vacancy awaits. The hole where my humanity should go, the sodden dreams and the silky soul. Ask the ghosts that linger in the eaves, ask the dead moth that has fallen from your drapes. Ask the cards for the mix and the measure. Cut the deck and call it out. Repeat your threes and add a prayer. There is no safety there.

Some days the coffee seems slow to cool. Some days lukewarm seals the kiss, black coffee lolls on my tongue, these hollowed out intimacies choked down no matter how hard to swallow. The atmosphere tastes your every motion, it rolls and spills about you. It stitches itself to you, blood and breath and hot black mirrors with your mouth all over. The tea leaves and the table. The circuit burning in your bones, this tidal tick and tock. I lift the cup as the wind kisses my graybeard and savaged features. I take a sip of hot black coffee, the usual ablutions as the warmth fills my chest. The sun lingers in the trees, I lift the cup without hope or wishes to my waiting lips. In the long, lingering light, I blow.