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eating with friends on the verge of divorce
C.C. Apap
the plates are older than either of the other relationships
at the table. intermixing steel and coffee colors at the edges,
the centers bear jagged lines, cut by the silver scars
of two decade’s worth of knives. not unlike a marriage—
a brief sonnet of a union, the last couplet of which strains
to find the feet to end it. everyone knows and tries to laugh
regardless. we talk of dishware, agreeing that none of us
had the room or inclination for fine china. pragmatists all
when we married, we refused to register for anything
we had no use for. anything we were unwilling to keep up by hand.
none of us speak about our fear that they break so easily,
shattering unless we wrap them and hide them away.
still, one of our old sturdy plates cracked the other day, I said.
like it or not, we will have one fewer place at the table.
C.C. Apap’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Belt Magazine, Alba, The Thimble Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight and The Wild Umbrella. His short story, “Bed and Breakfast,” is a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee. He teaches literature at Oakland University and lives north of Detroit in a suburb where doodle ownership seems like a fundamental requirement.