The Café

We next meet in the cold light of morning. My cup is sobering, your eyes less alive than they might have been before. We both smile, but with half a heart, half the heat, as if with a secret we don't whole-heartedly like to remember. Your laugh still wins me. Your gaze acts politer than when we really knew each other and it occurs to me- staring into your coffee- that while we both know I carry the quarantine of Not Happy it is only I who knows now that it is not you who can make me any otherwise.