Bless breakfast’s mutual understanding with hunger. 
Bless your delicately painted saucer, steadfast even

without the cup to touch it, like a wife. Bless your almost 
studious undressing of the grapefruit, stacking its peels

as though mastering a precarious card tower or a language. 
The whole morning is vetiver-scented and I do admire you

from this distance, your lissom figure made formidable
by virtue, simply, of sitting at that small bistro table, posture

displaying at the same time the charm of a mustachioed Parisien 
painting en plein air, the cheek of David, and the intellectual

might of Rodin’s Penseur. True, what’s occurred between us
was hardly a tryst—with enough others we’ll share meals like this—

but bless it anyway, the knife poised on the bed
of pastry crumbs, unplunged through either of our hearts.