A Cup of Coffee

The café windows were frosted with the breath of commuters,
Surrounded by the damp smell rising from coats soaked with rain,
The hair of the umbrellaless plastered like seaweed to their faces,
A sea of people washed in on the after-work tide,
The office hermit crabs changing their shells at the end of the day,
No one was aware of her siren song,
Their ears closed, tight as oyster’s shells,
She sang of her dreams and hopes,
The longing for some handsome merman,
To carry her away from the humdrum, froth free, routine world,
She could not escape unaided,
One sip at a time, she savoured the lotus eaters’ sweetness of her drink,
Trying to forget that without the freedom to swim away,
To break the glass,
Her mermaid spirit might shrivel,
Another human fossil on the City seabed.