How is it that you appeared
in the enameled tin cup
that you gave my husband
because he said he liked it?

This morning, he made coffee
in our usual way, handed the cup to me,
asked me what it tasted like.

The coffee at my parents’ house.

The house that has now been sold,
the last house you lived in, the one
whose kitchen you painted pink
a few months before you died
(repainted “greige” in order to sell).

Coffee there always tasted thin—
Folger’s or Maxwell House, even Kroger brand,
medium roast, milk instead of creamer.

How is it that you made the coffee
this morning? And how like you,
when I wish for you in dreams
or a voice late at night. Instead,

you give me something I don’t even like
and yet, of course I tell you I love it, it’s perfect.

(I do, and it is.)

Marilyn Cavicchia lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood with her husband, two children, and several animals, and is an editor at the American Bar Association. Other publications in which her work has recently appeared include Oddball Magazine and a Kin Press anthology from the first four issues of Pith. Marilyn’s first chapbook, Secret Rivers, was published a few years ago by Evening Street Press and received the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize. Follow her on Twitter: @MarilynCavi, and via her blog: www.marilyncavicchia.com.