CAFES WITH CAPPUCHINOS

It's cafes with cappuccinos where middle aged men

Meet middle-aged women with their pretentious promises

Facing each other and revealing their lives through

A load of self-effacing cosmic bubbles - dream on

I would have gone to the other cafe but last week

When near the dregs I saw my ex of a few years ago

Looking very portly

I think they may have been his children a trendy looking boy

and teenage girl with red streaks in her hair

but who could tell, as they didn’t

Sit with him

He was attached anyway to his mobile phone

I could pretend to not notice him and hope he won’t see me

But far too late for that now, doubt he’d even recognise me

Now as I’ve not aged much between 38 and 43

He had widened and shortened somehow probably too

many cappuccinos…

I expect he is with someone old now - like him

So today I sit in the window knowing that my much more recent

ex may appear through the door or walk by the window

At any given moment with a black briefcase containing his laptop

I am not hiding up the corner of our cafe, though

I feel it belongs to him with its convenient connections

To answer your email from business to dating in a new chair

Everything’s different from the day we first met

So full of anticipation, now I am waiting for a jacket potato

Let down by men there is always the paper

a mean substitute

The mirror, the telegraph or neither

I look at the stars and discover romance is meant to be good

I’ve had my share of partners but probably not my share of

Cappuccinos, Lattes or to be more adventurous - a strong Americano

Sounds familiar, like a character from West Side Story

I don’t see him but I look at every man who comes in with a black coat

Was he someone special, I doubt it,

he was just someone who liked

good wine and herbal tea

I enjoy my cafes

I’m not going to be bullied out of them by men

Another one arrives on the table oh yes; I forgot.

When you have six you get a free one it’s a scratch card

perhaps I’m a winner

Glance at the mobile again there might be a message or he might

be sitting somewhere different in another seat not ours

It’s time to go now,

Cafes and cappuccinos

time to go home.