in another universe, i brew you coffee

a poem

in another universe, maybe the one just behind this breath—
i still wake first.
i grind the beans you once picked out,
roasted by sun, sealed in memory.
the espresso machine sputters like an old lung,
spilling steam and small hope into our kitchen air.
you wander in barefoot, half-asleep,
heel grazing that chipped tile crack you once joked looked like a map to nowhere.
you perch on the counter, knees hugged to your chest,
watching me with that face that ruins me every time.

i slide the cup toward you, too dark, too bitter,
but you take it anyway.
not because you like the taste,
but because you see how much of me is inside it—
how much of me has always been for you.
you sip, wince, smile.
we don’t talk about leaving.
not today.

you still carry your ghosts.
but they’ve grown quieter now,
no longer sleeping between us.
you speak of your past like old songs — faded melodies, not warnings.
and i don’t flinch when you say their names,
because this time, you remember to say mine too.
your love arrives quiet, like light under a door—
but i know its shape, its effort, its offering.
and i hold it like scripture.

and on the days you break quietly—when nothing touches you right,
when your skin feels foreign and the mirror forgets your name—
i’ll move closer, not to fix, but to be.
to be hands that fold your laundry soft,
to be the silence beside your silence,
to remind you: you’re still here, and so am i.
love, at its most sacred, is attention.
and i am watching every trembling part of you without turning away.

i’ll try—
i’ll try until my knees bruise from all the kneeling,
until my voice frays from saying the wrong words
and loving you anyway.
until there’s nothing left of me
but this stubborn, holy heart—
still crawling toward you across the ruins,
still offering itself with trembling, open palms,
no matter how fragile, no matter how frayed.

because even on the days you shrink into yourself,
when your voice wavers and your hands forget how to reach—
i see you.
god, i do.
i see the parts of you you keep hidden,
the ones you’ve labeled too messy, too much,
and i love them with the same fire
that made me wake for the coffee in the first place.

this is the only universe we get—
no alternate endings, no doors ajar with better timings.
but even if the ground beneath us softens and splits,
even if we bend into strangers now and then,
i’d still choose this.
i’d still choose us—
the chipped tile, the bitter coffee, the trying again.

so tomorrow — maybe a tuesday, or just a quiet morning that feels like one
you’ll wake to the smell of something you never really liked,
but always let linger, because it was mine,
because it meant i was trying, even in silence.
you’ll take the cup from my hands — not for the taste,
but for the love folded into its warmth,
for the gesture, the devotion it carried.

and i’ll be there, barefoot on the cool tile,
hands still warm from holding the handle too long,
watching you — not for answers, not for promises,
just to memorize the way your face softens
when you choose to stay — not out of habit,
but because something in you still says yes.

and maybe that’s all love ever asked of us,
not perfection, not forever, not even certainty,
just the willingness to try again each morning,
to reach across the quiet, the bitter, the broken,
and say: i’m still here. i still want this. i still want you.
and in this version — the only one we have —
that is enough.

buy me a coffee