Coffee may just be
The most baffling liquid
Ever forged. Its taste is the
Sucking away of all taste,
For in its wake,
There remains
A void on your tongue
Where tastebuds once
Lived, and a conspicuous
Absence of a something
Not there anymore.
People say that we created
Our first mini blackholes
In particle colliders, but
People don’t say
That we’ve already created
Thousands, millions of
Mini blackholes
In our mouths,
On our tongues,
As the floodgates open
And coffee runs through.
People say that emptiness
Aches, and hurts, but
People don’t say
That there are some emptinesses,
Like the emptiness coffee leaves
In our mouths,
On our tongues,
That are both bitter
And smooth.
These are the kind of truths
That are engraved in billboards
But never spoken aloud
In polite conversation, preferring
To be sipped during the morning
Than spilled in the evening.

Wyeth Renwick’s poetry and short stories have appeared in issues and anthologies by the Veggie Wagon Journal, Down in the Dirt Magazine, the Weight Journal, and We Write Here. She is the founder and editor of the online poetry journal “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls.”