What the Glass Keeps Out

News leaks through the window.
Glass can't keep out the world.

People move their mouths on the screen below.
Truth arrives without sound, without mercy.

I rise before the bakery does.
Before the bread.
Before the light decides what it wants to be.

I rehearse silence the way others rehearse apology.
Badly, and with too much hope.

Dawn breaks whether I'm ready or not.
I meet it halfway, which is all I have.

They know my face at the counter.
The coffee knows my hands better than most people do.

Alone is not the same as empty.
I keep having to learn this.
Solitude has a voice and it sounds like mine, finally.

Still here.
Still capable of being wrecked by a good cup of coffee and the light on the wall.
That's not nothing.

--Vera