When you asked,
“Are you free tonight for espresso at the Coffee Bar, instead of Starbucks,”
I thought:
what do you have against Starbucks, I go there all the time?
Should I tell you?
Should I care?
Then I thought: how amazing,
after you told me the owners
were from Rome
and modeled it after Antigua Tazza d’Oro.
Then I got really worried: it sounded like you were there once.
And I hate to travel,
and I’m afraid of flying.
But who cares.
I decided I would let you take the lead,
listen to whatever fascinating
stories you had about Romans and espresso.

So, that night,
after telling me how amazing
your Segway tour around the city was,
and how it ended in front of the breath-taking Trevi Fountain,
I heard myself saying, “you know what’s funny,
I just read that Starbucks is planning on opening a store in Rome,
in some place called, Piazza S. Silvestro.”
And that’s when it happened: you seemed to stop breathing.
But in a few quick seconds after that, started to laugh,
“Oh my god, how funny are you?
There is no such thing as Starbucks in Rome.”
And then, with a slow lean toward me, which I thought
might be the start of our first kiss, you instead,
whispered into my ear,

“But if that is true,
it means God is no longer in his heaven,
and nothing again will be right in the world.”



David Calogero Centorbi is a writer living in Detroit, MI. Recently published work in The Daily Drunk, Dreams Walking, Versification, Brown Bag Online, Horror Sleaze Trash, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow Name, and Crepe & Pen. He can be found here on Twitter: @DavidCaCentorbi.