groceries
- coffee was how it started, bitter, bougie, bought on your debit card alongside
- blueberry muffins we baked together that decorated the table that became mine after you won me over with
-shrimp and
-pasta you made from scratch, chewy and clumsy, the sentiment as sweet as
-sugar knowing you'd weaved them with worried hands that sought to hold me like
-water rushing from the faucet, soothing over dishes stained with
-curry i packed into stuffy tupperware i secreted to you laying bored and pale in a bed as stiff as
-flatbread, the only thing i could keep down on the nights they didn't call with updates and your voice didn't follow me into sleep, soothing as codeine, warm like
-honey, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, is what your mother says when i come over in my one and only black dress, navigating blankly past armfuls of
-flowers and heavy glass pan bricks of
-lasagna meant to be chased with golden squares of
-lemon bars i choked down with
-tea presented in the faded red mug she tells me was always your favorite, brought up to pursed little lips on wintry nights where
-hot cocoa was the only antidote for the chill borrowed from hours spent playing hockey on the pond by the cemetery where you now sleep, gutted like a
-fish, cold as
-ice