“Some vessels drink you back.”
— Marginalia, Custodian of Cups
You are not the message.
You are the mouth.
And I am what you feed on —
slowly, sweetly,
until I forget I was meant to leave.
You ask nothing.
But I keep giving.
First the silence,
then the hours,
then the marrow.
I thought you were ritual.
Turns out you were the grave.
Your curl never loosens.
It coils in the cup,
in my chest,
in the dark behind my teeth.
You move,
and in moving,
you unmake the parts of me
that ever thirsted for anything else.
And when you have me,
you will not spit me out.
Recovered from kitchen counter, steam still rising.