Spilling coffee
on a collection of photographs
not just a little splash
but a wild outpour
I feel my hot drowning
assault on
the years of memories
the faces of the family
and and pets in the past
now gone on or grown.

It's days after the family funeral
and I’m back home
coping, except for
committing this unpredicted slip,
and wishing I’d spilled tears instead, earlier
before this unnerving clumsiness
or clumsiness of nerves
over my dresser top
and treasures.

My hands might have been
steadier then.

And I’m bargaining aloud
pleas of I'm sure I have another copy
of this...but of that? Probably the negatives!
The faces at my fingers
seem to haunt my disrespect.

No time for if only's
or self-disdain.

Though I fit in a curse at myself
for carrying
my full coffee cup here.

Now I'm frantically rushing through
separating the ruins from escapees
salvaging what can be, imagining the damage,
when stickiness and stains set in, as
I’m mopping and spot sponging,
spreading out the past
to dry,

and I’m thinking it’s true
it’s much healthier to cry.

03/01/2005