Sitting at the kitchen table,
picking at her fingertips: outstretched,
and barren with loneliness,

she touches them
to the hot mug of tea.
It burns.
Sweet sugars, stinging her sorrows,
drowning her desires in lukewarm water,
black with tears.

They hurt, her fingers,
stretched out to reach
something just barely
in the distance.

A sailboat on the edge
of the ocean.
The deep black sea of her
heart.

She peels  
at the blistered hands.
They are not
her own.