KAIMAKI

The coffee on my stove fills

its lungs with air; mahogany

ocean in a pouting bronzed pot.

Upper layer rises, thickens,

velvets watery darkness;

always poised on precipice,

never boiling, never spilling.

Then taken off the stove.

Kaimaki is never rushed; its

pouring, a slow silk route of

secrets slipping from pouting

pot to sipping lip bouquets.

Across the tongue and heart

kaimaiki leaves an echo:

rests a fortune, tells of destinies.

But we don’t want to know.

Unfallinginlovable, was what I

thought you, but you rose, thickened,

velveted, over my watery bitterness.

Covered all my surfaces, carved me

with silken roads in sediments

of darkness; sipping lip bouquets

until you became my, kaimaki.

A brewing mahogany secret.  

We sipped in forbidden forests; I sloped

into your branches, filled our lungs

with air; rose, thickened, velveted,

never boiling, never spilling, always

poised on precipice. Across our

tongue and heart, kaimaki left an

echo, layering kaimakisses,

Over our separate darkness.

In time’s mahogany moments, we

are slowly sipped by forest, we are

its kaimaki. We spread across the

forest’s tongue, along its sediment

heart, cover all its surfaces, carve

silken roads and leave a brewing

echo: rest a fortune, tell of destinies.

But the forest doesn’t want to know.

The piece below was long listed for the Fish Short Story Prize in 2019 ( under the initial title ‘Stock and Stack’). The story was later published in IN FOCUS magazine Vol 17, June 2020.