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Personal Note:
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Poem
Your coffee cup still sits
on the kitchen table—
the one you slammed down
that Tuesday morning,
saying *I can't do this anymore*,
coffee splashing across
the crossword we'd started together.

Week One: I scrub the stain
with bleach and fury,
curse your name
into the empty rooms.

Week Six: I catch myself
setting two plates for dinner,
pause halfway to the cabinet,
my hand suspended
in the space between
habit and acceptance.

Week Ten: The dentist's office calls—
your cleaning appointment
is overdue.
I say you've moved.
The receptionist asks
for a forwarding address.
I hang up,
imagining you somewhere
where no one
remembers your name.

Week Fifteen: I find
your shopping list
tucked in *Beloved*—
milk, oranges, that good bread—
your handwriting
still believing
in our future tense.

*We should make French toast
this weekend*, you'd written
in the margin.
I remember how you'd laugh
when I burned the edges.

Week Twenty: I'm learning
to sleep diagonally,
to claim the whole bed
as mine,
but still I wake
reaching for the shape
you left in cool, wrinkled sheets.

Freedom tastes like guilt.

Week Twenty-Five: The barista
at our coffee shop
stops asking
*Where's your better half?*
I realize I've been coming here
alone for months,
ordering black coffee
instead of your ridiculous
half-sweet lavender oat latte
with extra cinnamon dust.

Week Thirty: I can say
*my apartment*
instead of *ours*
without my voice
breaking.

Week Thirty-Five: I bring
your coffee cup
to the garden,
fill it with soil
and basil seeds.
You always said
I should grow something.

The green shoots
push through the earth—
stubborn as hope,
persistent as the way
you used to hum
while washing dishes.

I water them
with what's left
of missing you,
and discover
I have been growing
all along—

into someone
who can love
the memory
without drowning in it.

*

I pour the last of you
into the earth
and watch it grow.
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