The Red Cafe

“I don’t know how anyone could do this to me,” you declare as you sip my tea. Your split tongue wraps around the lip of the mug and tips it back. With the other tongue, you confirm, “I am the victim.” 

The cafe table isn’t conducive for the spikes on your back. You complain to the waitress, who can’t do much, then you decide she’s a bitch once she’s out of earshot. The universe is conspiring against you. 

Having been inside of your stomach, I’ve learned to tune you out without hurting your glass feelings; a feat of which I’m clandestinely proud. 

In the window reflection, the watered-down proximity to you makes my red cape look like wilted roses. Passersby confuse the reflections and you are now in the red cape. 

I call the waitress over for another mug of tea; before she hands it to me, she spits in it. I pass it to you. 

You pick a spare tea leaf from between your fangs. The dagger one might call a claw pokes at your gums until they bleed. You taste the juice like fresh peach pity. Through soulless eyes you whine, “why am I always getting hurt?”

So I speak an ancient incantation passed down through generations of women in my family: “I don’t know, she’s a real bitch,” like staring into the abyss and calling it a crack.

---

2021