Ode to a Chipped Mug at Dawn

Ode to a Chipped Mug at Dawn

By BR giga

I sing the body caffeinated.

Not the heroic body, no,

the slouched kitchen body,

hair misbehaving,

arguing with daylight.

O Cup, blunt oracle of porcelain,

you squat on the counter

like a dockworker waiting for the bell.

You contain no prophecy,

only heat.

I lean into you

as if you are the Atlantic in November,

cold-hearted, corrective,

and honest enough not to flatter.

You smell like roasted soil,

like the underside of ambition,

like something dug up and set on fire

for the sake of getting through Tuesday.

I drink you black.

Milk is mercy.

Sugar is fiction.

This is not a fairy tale.

The first swallow scalds,

a small necessary violence.

The tongue protests.

The spine straightens anyway.

O America of unpaid invoices,

of inboxes breeding overnight,

of headlines shouting into tin cans,

behold the citizen

with his chipped mug and narrowing eyes.

Nothing changes.

The rent remains.

The calendar does not apologize.

Yet something inside the ribcage clicks,

a switch thrown in a damp basement.

I walk now.

I move.

I rejoin the republic of obligation.

By the last sip

a brown crescent clings to the rim

like a moon that survived the shift.

The cup empties.

The man does not.

I go forth,

steam in my beard,

bitterness in my bloodstream,

singing softly of work.