Breakfast

I woke up with the fiction of your lips still
cementing the roof of my mouth
Upstairs, the neighbors are skipping morning
around the espresso machine
I play asleep to the bacon breaking sounds of the skillet
But up above they are heavy like daybreak and your
pin needled arm is preferring my side of the bed
So I’ll be content with an arm cloaked morning to
watch the sun split over your resting temples
To have a gently heaving body remind me of the blood
floating through my own, that warmth, that vulnerable.

Your sleep is tying a knot in my geriatric knee
It’s the good kind of pain that

reminds me breakfast is soon

So I will dedicate this moment to the eggs we will crack,
the way we will wrestle the upstairs neighbors
with our tea kettle and kitchen karaoke
“Baby” will be the safest love song for sleepover friends
so we will find it on the radio immediately
Make microphones out of yolk dripping spatula
And blow out our shattered lungs before
the coffee is even cool enough

When the circuits of your body finally snap
I will secure the prospect of morning meal and
feel comfort in your sleep smelling voice,
how it still sounds like everything that came before it.
I don’t have a name for this move yet
but I know that coffee stained stomachs and doorways
can make for more constraint and sorry
than I tend to build my mornings from
and dawn will stop serving breakfast soon.

So I will boil water for French pressed conversation
Will suggest eating in bed like couples would
but blame it on the roommates
I will call this move “insurance”
Risk losing my entire Sunday to the well-perfected omelet
To your breath on my hand over crosswords
To the clanking sound of perfect pans being excavated
Or to the caffeine jolt of your body when
we finally leave the stove alone for awhile.