the coffee gets colt

there are days, occasional Fridays, when you’re the greatest hero of the world

sitting in your kitchen at 1:05 pm and watching how your second coffee gets cold

nobody sees this

  nobody reads your mind

  as you think about your father’s Colt,

the number of with you’d forget just like you forgot

the single night shot

you savor the sip of the coffee and it tastes like

  “isn’t it what i’ve told?”

and — you ha(v)te to admit it — your life’s exactly what he’s told.

the coffee gets cold

the coffee gets cold.

you feel like a came-home soldier

with the unbearable weight on your shoulder

you might probably die if you don’t lose up your pajama’s suit

you might probably cry if you make yourself think that “it’s all for the good”

but it’s all for the good

    isn’t it?

there’s no one waiting for you, only the quiet neighborhood,

and the memories of the things that you could

should        do

would

they’re scaring you

there’s dust you have to clean, there is someone ( your mom ) who you should call,

there are enough things to not do any of them at all

watching the coffee gets cold

watching the coffee gets cold

you still live in the moment of the shot,

of the sirens of the ambulance,

paramedic going through your white picket fence

  uncaring,

     quick,

       you think it might even fall

while the coffee gets cold

the coffee gets cold

to not think, to make yourself stop

   you take your old laptop

and there it goes, the hardest, the greatest battle of all

  ( the coffee gets cold )

the googling

 “is it bad to sit and just stare at the wall?”

  “what is the potion to—“

   “what’s the”

“where to find a cheap version of liquor top-shelf?”

“how do you kill yourself”

“the easiest way to slip a throat”

“why do i still hear the shot

of the night

when my father took his life????”

“what if every time i’m fine

       it’s a lie?”

“what if it’s a crime of me to be alright?”

a lie

alright

a lie

but alright,

it’s such a pity:

nobody sees the greatest war

happening while the coffee gets cold

in between the question what’s for

and staring at the wall.

sometimes on occasional Fridays, you become a world’s silent soldier

that has to unpack that burden, the folder

the greatest soldier

  “killing you—“

 “the reason of unreasonable shivering”

you untype it until it goes

“cheap food delivery”

Chainka Shvied

Chainka was born in Kherson (Ukraine), but due to war she had to travel abroad. She has been writing since she was 8 years old, mostly prose but also poems. She writes in English and Ukrainian in the topics that touch your soul hard and soft at the same time: war, peace, love, hatred, — and how they’re all placed together in a human. The works of her were published in Meraki Review, Garden Literature, Eloquentia and many others.

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