I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes

The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.

Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?

I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.

Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.

Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.

And Woman looks around.

Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.

And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.

The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.

Love is not gentle
It is a sea of vast pain.
Do not go swimming.