1. [the cup that was art]

by the time you came,

i had finished my white chocolate iced coffee.

i had not seen you in a very long time.

you had not been a tea-drinker at that time,

and from the way you only let your tea steep a minute,

i suspected you were still new to it.

you held the tea bag a second

against the rim of your styrofoam

as i’m sure you had seen done,

then set the tea bag on the table.

you did not even put a pad of napkins under it.

you just set it there on the table

where lukewarn raspberry water collected in a puddle around it.

when the conversation lulled,

i took it from your side of the table and dropped it into my cup,

which was empty except for the half-melted ice,

the dregs of my sugar-coffee, and a straw.

then i added the brown paper napkin i’d used 

to wipe up the mess you’d made

and put the lid back on top.

you said, “you just did all that,” as though you were surprised.

and then we talked.

you’d been fliting with girls again

and i had forgotten what i believed in (again),

and when you finished your tea,

you folded your cup a couple times in half

and added it to the trash in my glass.

we sat there for a few hours

even after we were done,

ripping up napkins as neatly as we could

and tossing the scraps into the cup.

at one point, you picked the cup up.

the ice had melted

and the napkins had drawn up the dirt water

like a wick.

you said, “this is gross.”

i said, “maybe, but it’s kind of pretty.”

you said, “i’ve made art,”

and i reminded you that i had helped,

and you said, “we’ve made art.”

this one may well go in the pile of shame. it was the first day. but it's like, half a page of prose with line breaks in it, which i almost never approve of. images is what saves that style of writing, and i don't think these make the cut. 

on the other hand, when i had coffee with non-responsive-friend, i actually did put his tea bag into my cup-- which is genuinely not freudian, i sweartogod-- and wipe up the mess he'd made. and he actually did add his cup, and we actually did watch the napkins in the cup soak up the dirty melted ice and compete to tear perfect squares out of other napkins.

i like that basic skeleton as an expression of how friendships work. but i don't think the stab at poetry above cuts it. in revision i would need to find a way to build the whole image of the frankensteiney dealio, and i would need to pare out unnecessary detail.