COFFEE CUPS AND PLATES

 

Sticky rings of coffee

Punctuate the flat

Like lost moments,

Sharing their space

With ash and singed paint.

Mugs are drowning in cold dishwater

And plates lie dying

With memories of meals

Painted on their glaze.

Artefacts of a life

Decorate the walls,

Small portals to nostalgia

Flavouring the mind with a taste of history.

Yesterday’s stale loaf

With a severed crust,

Crumbs and butter bleeding

From the bread knife,

Dies on the work surface

Just inches from the safety of an empty breadbin.

Discarded clothes grow

From the old carpet,

Mushrooms on an unkempt lawn,

With pages of a newspaper

Spread like autumn leaves

Fallen from the tree of another day’s news.

Lost glories are woven

Into the scent of the room

Fermenting in reminiscence.

Lost love floats in smoke rings

Perfuming the recollections

With the heartbreak of a lover’s absence.

Hope degrades in the waste bin

With empty fag packets

 Crumpled unsent letters

And a future without purpose

Left untended, unfertilised

By anything other than loneliness.