The Rim Remembers

I drank coffee from your cup— still warm where your mouth had pressed, the rim embossed with your lower lip’s faint crest. Now rust stains every silver spoon, fingers drum restless rhythms on our kitchen’s worn lagoon. In checkout lines, your laughter flickers— a candle’s flame in strangers’ whispers. I turn, but find no spark, no face— just hollow aisles, silent grace. For briefest moments, you almost grace this place. Time ticks like your mother’s clock— missing beats in measured shock. I count the silences that fold the past into what’s next, bridging spaces between love’s loss and life’s complex. You were the fever breaking dawn’s fragile thread, and I, the tangled sheets still holding echoes of your stead, learning to smooth where hope once bled. Your voice lingers in static between waves, almost here, then swept away. I’m learning the weight of absence, how it falls like coins in pockets— weighty, worn familiar, softly chiming as I step forward into morning’s timing.