The World Doesn't End

At a dingy café, where coffee tastes like soot,
we sit, you and I, in mismatched chairs.
Your smile is a fugitive, hiding in the outskirts.
So I tell you a joke the crow told the scarecrow
about the sun taking a day off to play hooky.

Something twitches on your stone face—a leaf?
No, a half-moon grin fights the gravity of gloom.
We are two odd socks in a world of matched pairs,
laughing at the absurd parade passing by.

I say the teacup is a prophet, the rain, a jokester
who writes ticklish verses on our window—
and the world with all its despairing weight
is lighter than a cat's whisker today.

You look at me, skeptically, then back at your cup.
Its steam draws caricatures of our silent gods.
With a shrug, you sip the bitter brew of the morning,
letting a chuckle escape like a prisoner set free.

Some days are thistles, others, soft dandelions
today, we made it anything but a thorn bush.