flesh and bone (the kitchen table)
A cup of coffee is growing cold. The morning ritual unfolds around the kitchen table. V is one day older, plucky and calm. N’s face is a quiet ocean at that lost moment when the tide is neither going in or out. My hands do not look so old, curled around the cup and those last few sips. I still recognize them.
They go out for the day, bundled in warm coats - feet pinched into new boots. I say goodbye in the hallway, two or three times like I always do. There is always that extra glimpse of them, as they wait for the elevator and do not know I am still standing there. There is something comforting in watching them go, looking over my shoulder before pulling the door closed. I hold them this way, until they come back.
The kitchen is dark, and that cup of coffee is waiting. In moments like this, it feels like all of life is gathered in these minuscule moments. A look. Half of a joke. A child with wide eyes. The smell of N’s perfume still in the room. Everything boiled down to flesh and bone, thought and gesture, sitting around a table that is slowly falling apart.