Fourteen

Your favorite cup is feathered with fractures
and stained in the bottom corners.
It's probably older than I am.
I've known it longer, much longer,
than I've known what's inside.
I took my first sip from it, you know.

You take time for one coffee
with cereal (two if one runs out --
it doesn't matter. Sugary flakes
with colored ohs, some two percent
and they taste about the same).
You're going to be late if you don't go.

What are you reading in today's paper?
Not the sports; mom wants the obits.
Is it local? Finance?
Has the lottery been drawn
for moose permits again?
What are they saying of Olympia Snowe?

Fifteen years and more have passed.
I see the cup still in the cupboard
three thousand miles away.
Or maybe you brought it with you
when you rushed out the door for work,
hazarding little drips, now dried up mid-flow.