For the people who cry into hot chocolate at Caffe Nero.

A gurgling well stirs somewhere in the space between my belly button
and my soul.
Why am I still hungry?
I have eaten every roll of laughter at the table
and my cup is half empty.
The milk has soured, or
is it my tongue?
My voice tastes cracked like cement and lung
or something I forgot to say
fourteen years ago
to a boy before he died young.
The words have turned to stones
in my salivary glands
and my face hurts when I spit
at spoon reflections in my hand
There is a great emptiness behind the silvery convexes of my eyeballs
and it fills with unfixable things
like memories and people.
A truer poet may say that death
is the only cure for heartache
but suffering
is a pipe of hashish
whose smoke is ripe with promises of justice
and I fear sobriety, and dying and
The thought that it is just this.
If I ladled immortality like gravy over my spirit
I cannot say for certain it
would spill into the dryness of my bones
and make my femurs feel less weary walking
under stretched skin sewn
from swallowing plates of comfort whole
and choking on the shame
until my lungs
filled with crumbs and lactate.
I have forgotten how to breathe
but rings of expectation tighten
around my trachea
and squeeze
and I remember I cannot leave nor
stop smiling,
even if the well is full
and I have drowned.