Monday morning haiku

bleary eyes and yawns,
there is no coffee at home.
Mondays make me cry.

I wrote this haiku this morning at six. I woke up hearing the coffeepot beep, and the dog whining. With a hair tie, my glasses slumping down my face, I shuffled down the stairs to let the dog outside. He still needs me to walk outside first, apparently to make sure ninjas don't attack. It is ridiculous, and yet,with the moderate temperatures, I really don't mind. I made my way back inside, still wiping the sand from my eyes, got a mug, poured the coffee, walked to the computer, sip...shit. It's water. Lukewarm water. What the hell...oh, right, it all came back in an instant. Sam standing in the kitchen. "Ang, did you get coffee?"

We frantically searched the freezer, the way way back of the cabinet. ANYWHERE. No coffee. Well, decaf, but no caffeine. He had poured the water in the coffeepot already, so I said, like a normal person, "It'll be fine."

Who the fuck was I kidding? There was no coffee. Until morning coffee, nothing is fine.

I put an Earl Grey tea bag in the coffeepot water. There, I admit it.

It was bloody awful, but I was desperate.

Then, Sally chatted me up, asked me if I was doing okay, she read my haiku. I meant to be overly dramatic about my lack of caffeine, though truth be told, a headache and grouchiness were seeping into my morning. I was sort of down. Really, though, I meant for the haiku to be funny. I think haiku, when used properly, is the perfect vehicle for comedy. Well, I think poetry in general can. I have said to my sister or my husband on a particularly hard day, "I just wrote a poem. Would you like to hear it? It is entitled 'Blackness Surrounds Me Like a Shroud, Number 692'" There is always some little iota of truth in our joking, no?

:::

So, earlier than usual, I pulled on a hoodie, and some jeans, and headed to the local cafe. A pound of La Colome coffee, treat myself to a cappuccino for my hard work. The cafe lady told me she didn't have a grinder for the coffee. "Couldn't you go round to your neighbor's house?"
"To grind a pound of coffee?"
"Or the market."
"Can you bring in a pound of coffee purchased elsewhere to grind? You mean, you sell coffee beans, but no means to grind it?"
"Maybe you should buy a grinder for your house."
"I have a grinder, but I don't want to pull it out."
"But it'll taste better if you grind by the pot."
"Here is the thing. I don't want to grind by the pot. I just want to make the coffee. I'll just go somewhere else, I guess."

Five minutes of my life I will never get back. I head to Starbucks, the evil empire of coffee, and let Darth Vader make me a vat of cappuccino.

:::



I get home curl on the couch with my warm and comforting drugs (coffee and steamed milk). Beatrice brought me a book this morning to read to her. It was my favorite book growing up. It is called the Bunny Book. If you are familiar with this particular Little Golden Book, then you can just go ahead and give a good sob and stop reading here.

Don't you feel better?

For those unfamiliar, it is painful. So very painful now, and so touching. I had no idea. I began reading it...let me preface this by saying that Richard Scarry's bunnies are amongst my favorite children book images. I am a Bunny is one of my favorite children's books. Anyway, it begins, "The Daddy Bunny tossed his baby in the air. 'What will our baby be when he grows up?' asked the daddy bunny." *whimper* And everyone in the family takes turns guessing what the baby will be...a policeman, a circus clown *shudder*, a doctor, a cowboy, a farmer, a candy store owner. All the while, the baby bunny just slyly smiles and knows what he will be.

Of course, do you know what he wants to be?

"...a daddy rabbit! That is what he will be--with lots of little bunny children to feed when they are hungry. He will be a nice daddy who will chase the children when they want to be chased..."

Cue maniacal sobbing.

And in an image that still defines my idea of a perfect home, there is the daddy bunny, on the last page of the book, stepping on a stool tucking in a little bunny into the top of four built-in wall bunks, as another child waits with a little stuffed bunny flopped by his side.

Everything seems some elaborate code for alienation, longing, love, loss. I guess I always wanted to be a Mommy Bunny. A mommy bunny that chased the children, tossed them high into the air, imagined what they would be when they grew up, reading them books, tucking them into a wall of bunks. I feel so cheated from days of lightness. I miss my lightness.

So now, another Monday morning haiku:

reading little books
about being a daddy
makes tears of longing.

that one wasn't supposed to be funny.