Soup de jour

Today I will make a soup
and it will taste of winter
and indecision
and losing you.

I will put a cloud in the pot,
and all the questions I don't know to ask,
that would yield answers I could give,
answers that would come quickly
from my gut
that I wouldn't doubt.
I will add silence.
I will add a lie,
an ommission,
and two truths:
I love you and I never loved you.

I will add damp leaves
and chest pain.

I will drink it alone;
it will remind me of riding the bus
when I was 13
and all that sadness,
all that unease;
of how in my dreams sometimes
I go subterranean,
down deep
and there's a mild panic.
I will drink it alone
and wait for it to move through.