Behind me in the booth

Behind me in the booth,

she said: "I didn't tell him because I didn't think it would change a thing."

The resignation in her mouth,

the way defeat can make you sing

in a flat, resigned voice,

the way she'd already given up

before she'd made a choice,

before she'd lifted the cup.

The coffee sat untouched.

She pushed it away, pulled it back,

a rhythm of someone who's been clutched

by silence, who's given up the track.

The other woman nodded.

That's all. Just one nod that said:

I understand. My words have wadded

up in my throat too. I've bled

for someone who wouldn't listen,

I've chosen silence instead.

And I understood resignation then—

how it moves quietly through the air,

how it becomes your station,

how love dies everywhere

in booths where coffee goes cold,

where people stop trying to be heard,

where the same stories are told

in silence, without a word.

I left before they did.

I never saw their faces.

But I felt it—the way she hid

herself away in those spaces.