Through the noisy door, people float in with the indelible sun

tangled in their hair, refulgent on their coat lapels.

There’s Mother.

She does not carry in the sun,

and she orders, Un crème, s’il vous plaît. Odd.

Never been one

to leave after one. I write it down as two.

The sun has now pooled in my hands. I

look at all the cigarette smoke swirling to the ceiling and then

succumbing to the light.

I think the milk steamer will scream now. I want

the milk steamer to scream now. There’s Mother,

playing Bach on the record player. And the

usually quiet white walls—

dance today. Cave

in a slow

dell.

Swell

in a low crest.

Cave in a—blue

from the bass clefs bleeds out and suffuses the walls. Suffuses

the floor,

the people, the windows until they have sunk and blue

has become the café and I

have spilled an order. The milk steamer, when it screams,

screams

listlessly.

Gustave gently grabs my arm,

and takes me aside.

And pleads to let him at least drive me to the funeral. I

snatch back my arm. There’s Mother, before the counter.

There’s Mother inside

the record player. There she is at the tables, clutching her

pearls, stubbing her

cigarette. Stubbing her cigarette. Stubbing it

out. Out. Out.