The Coffee Grounds by Laila Brahmbhatt

THE COFFEE GROUNDS 

I nearly told him we could be characters from 
a book that's never written.
He asked why I needed to say everything out loud, 
why not let him be the bandage, 
instead of the wound.
I told him:

you bloom as the smell
of fresh coffee
where there were scars once.

Unsaid things between us
settle like coffee grounds.

He lies next to me, quiet,
curling and uncurling
a strand of my hair.
I drink the last of the coffee
in one breath.

And I nearly told him
all of it 
even that the coffee steam takes his shape.

Laila Brahmbhatt, a Kashmiri/Jharkhand-rooted writer and Senior Immigration Consultant in New York, has published haiku and haibun in several international journals, including Cold Moon Journal and Failed Haiku.

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