A Thrift Store Cup with Blue Lotus

Sometimes the weight of it is too much,
the ten thousand mornings I cup between my palms
those ten thousand times your lips touched its rim.

I do not know you. But I know the blue lotus
at the bottom of the well as one more hot grief
passes between us and rolls across my tongue.

I know the shape of your hands
and what a warm stomach becomes
when a sunken flower reveals itself,

so blue and sudden. I know that as a body cools,
the emptiness we find must soon be filled

again on each and countless morning,
again, on every lotus drowned.

Image: Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Published: Glassworks Magazine, Issue 26, Spring 2023