Coffee Mugs
After "What the Angels Left Behind"
My roommate says I have too many coffee mugs,
ceramic containers with paw prints, graduation caps,
cartoon characters sledding, patterns, designs,
some bought, some gifted.
They pile on our countertops, dirty in the kitchen sink,
overfill our cabinets so that the plates no longer have a residence.
I only use one at a time, the same one for a week before washing.
I carry the mug from apartment, to car, to work, to coffee shop
to whatever appointment awaits me.
In the weeks following the diagnosis, I reuse the same mug,
changing out coffee for beer, and liquor, and water, and coffee again.
When it drops on the pavement outside the doctor’s office and shatters,
I stand alone, picking up the pieces.
ceramic containers with paw prints, graduation caps,
cartoon characters sledding, patterns, designs,
some bought, some gifted.
They pile on our countertops, dirty in the kitchen sink,
overfill our cabinets so that the plates no longer have a residence.
I only use one at a time, the same one for a week before washing.
I carry the mug from apartment, to car, to work, to coffee shop
to whatever appointment awaits me.
In the weeks following the diagnosis, I reuse the same mug,
changing out coffee for beer, and liquor, and water, and coffee again.
When it drops on the pavement outside the doctor’s office and shatters,
I stand alone, picking up the pieces.
Lynne Schmidt is the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, and mental health professional with a focus in trauma and healing. She is the winner of the 2021 The Poetry Question Chapbook Award, and the 2020 New Women's Voices Contest. Her chapbooks include Sexytime (forthcoming with The Poetry Question), Dead Dog Poems (Finishing Line Press), Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press) which was listed as one of the 100 Best Breakup Books of All Time by Book Authority, and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West), which was featured on The Wardrobe's Best Dressed for PTSD Awareness Week. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Schmidt prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.