Coffee in the lunchroom never cooled

in time for us to drink it until after

we had to leave to go back upstairs to

the ineffective decaf. Chuck’s drugged laughter,

deep as comfort, shook at the savory

lewd humor circling our table at lunch,

stained pink in Rorschach frames from the

day before when we toppled the fruit punch.

Scratching my chair back from the table, I

hospital-socked over to the coffee

bar. I pulled a styrofoam cup from

the tower, held down the tab as caffeine

sloshed in. I ch-ch-ch’ed nine packets of

powdered creamer and five sugars until

they felt flat between my fingers, and then

tore them open and watched them silt

into the brown water, changing it from

Chuck’s skin tone to mine. We pretended

I was cold and Chuck gave me his hoodie.

Into the trash, more patients upended

trays and I palmed the cup and slid the sleeve

down over it. We thought we were clever,

though everyone knew that we did this so we

could smuggle held hands in the elevator.

9/21/09