Café Sua Da

Perhaps it’s easier to call love dead
than accuse you of changing shapes.

You have waited for me since
the day I tried Thai food. It changed

me, set a string of notable events
tumbling across my diary pages,

the foray into that other suburb,
a band found that I would travel

Great distances to hear again, but haven’t,
similar to how you’ve been missing

all of this not at all & that’s fine.
Let’s remember you have nothing

to do with the arc towards the death
of my motivation, the depth of my

depression, me in the right place
to find the public library bearable and

Zen books worthwhile, hence somehow
our meeting at this Viet coffee shop

six A.M. one of these annoying Tuesdays,
you ready to start a new chapter about

a fling with some sweetly creepy guy,
the next page in your snarky chick-lit.

In this pre-emptive breakup, can I keep
the café? Go look fulfilled elsewhere.

We all knew you’d be here and
no one wants to be seen coming.

______________________________________

Johnny Chinnici is a graduate of the University North Texas and currently lives in Houston. His poetry and essays have appeared in Gigantic Sequins and North Texas Review, and he maintains a blog of poems and musings on baseball at Ninety Feet.