Self Conscious Coffee Grinding

Rockabye baby don’t say a word, or momma out of your chest she’ll carve a flying bird


I place my tongue
in the cusp of the cup
where flesh touches bone of my teeth.


Coffee tastes the same after the third cup; I started drinking black when I quit cigarettes. Sometimes when I roll the grounds across the curve of my tongue it tastes like the red Russians I religiously started my mornings with. My skin itches at the thought of a smoke so place a bud in my ear and let a guitar rift clatter across my skull, tripping clumsily over the mess of my thought process I should have cleaned and organized into neat piles. Procrastination and the temptation of a numbingly dull conversation with a peer had convinced me to think of it later.

The fluorescent youth of the couple behind is hurting my head as the screaming of the singer begins to hurtle across the interior of my brain at 100 miles an hour. I hear her pounding from the inside so I quickly pull the head phone from the shell of the ear hoping she takes the hint.

I realize that what I wish for is not clamoring notes but sheer silence, it is near impossible for this in a coffee shop. I tune into the noise of the caffeine driven machines, whirring, chatting, giggling, and prodding with an elfish glory at the nakedness of my emotions that have scattered in my minds absence like teeth to a hammer upon the lament surface of the table, straightening their
tentacles they wave, to become the interest of others.
Embarrassed

I collect them, suffocating and crushing them with the soft map of wrinkles attached to my wrist. I messily shove them into my mouth, swallowing their indignant cries as I taste the raw flesh of
feeling.

The couple is politely stealing covert glances at the phantom crumbs that have collected on the corners of my mouth.
Self consciously I swab them free avoiding their embers to
ignite with mine that are placed within our eye sockets.
I can be normal. See how picture perfect Dahlia Adele can
stir her cup of coffee, now watch as I sip, notice no drips,
tight tight tight corners taunt, see how average? How
humdrum mundane teenage gossip eater am I?

You are all looking at me I can feel it, but the joke is on you.

Rockabye baby don’t say a word, or momma out of your chest she’ll carve a flying bird

watch
me
beg
my
sanity