The pot of coffee perks and drips into the day ahead. I inhale brewed vanilla and glance at the classifieds – lost dogs, found dogs, yard sales, home sales, household. At the kitchen table you fold your paper in half, creasing its spine until it lies flat then test the point of your pencil, begin with one across. Flax fabric, you mumble, five letters. Linen, I blurt, set down two mugs of steaming coffee and bite my tongue for loosing the answer too soon. Your shoulders rise and fall. Lead gouges each blank square. The coffee pot exhales a post-brew breath like your whispered alpine cottage, six letters. I sit on the worn needlepoint cushion, imagine a chalet with flowering window boxes and cows that lean to the left on grassy hills. Over the pond beyond the house I glimpse a skein of blackbirds driven upward, filigreed. They rise as one, then dip and veer off, black specks stippling the open page of sky. A murmured acquiescent, eight letters returns me to household items, its long list of discarded lives – drawers emptied, rooms swept, dishes stacked. Resigned, I think, reading the single-lined ad: nesting bowls, blue rims chipped, as is.
