Little Cup

Kashawn Taylor

(For Kenny)

Awake before the sun,
I fill the little white cup
you gifted me in parting
last night with freeze-dried
Colombian instant coffee,
the aroma robust and earthy and South American
         exotic.
The dusty vents spew ice this morning.
I shake, and I spill
powdery white creamer along
its chilly lip, on the dull tile floor.
Leave the taste of French vanilla
         for the ants today.

 My resealable bag of cappuccino
crinkles between slender brown fingers
rippling from my lock
throughout the dorm, tickling
sleeping ears. I pause.
Scoop.

Red safety lights glow ominously overhead,
a tenebrous warning:
pivot! you are alone now,
as I tap the steel nozzle.
I hiss, pull back for it is hot,
ripe for the taking like the old
blankets discarded on your bunk,
browned with stray coffee.
I drown the mixture in steaming
water and it, like us, becomes
changed entirely – a mélange
of both congenital and external.

On my way back,
I pause, look left.
Your empty bunk jars me;
I expect your body like a felled tree
in the sad space you called home.
Both hands wrapped
tightly around your little white cup,
I cherish its newfound warmth
tempered by insipid chestnut-stained plastic.

There is no mattress
no body nobody
no scattered belongings
hanging haphazardly from the tray up top.
There is only me, an eddy
of snores, and this little cup.
I snap on the pale red sip-lid,
slide white latch open. Scent sighs
into the air, cloying and nostalgic
and like you leaving, inescapable.

I sip.