In The Coffee Shop Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

There are only two of us in the coffee shop —
old friends, doors still open,
discussing what no longer matters.

Once, intervention meant something.
Now we are grown —
some healthy tissue, some tumor cells,
undiagnosed,
unseen,
growing in silence.

Sons and daughters drift in their own orbits.
For one, a wife has left.
For the other, a wife is no more.

One cup — half full, cold, untouchable.
The other — empty, clean, white.

Existence carries more grief
than the nonexistent.
Perhaps.
Only perhaps.