✨ Crème Brulee

with passion fruit..

Crème Brulee

with passion fruit. Says it all.
Tapping the glassy sugar with a spoon,
the first taste—rush of wild memory.

Gentle whisperings of everything and nothing,
crash of waves against the breakwater down below.
Mellow music. Mellow sway of B and B

in a snifter to one side, his hand reaching across
for hers on the other.
How could it not always be this way.

It’s been a long while
since she found herself out with another.
Sadly, she was much too smart

in every wrong place—he was much too
unconcerned to realize she was smart.
His hand reached no further than his dessert spoon.

There was no delicate tapping, no whispers
and no blush, just a brief glance at his watch,
the same as she’d already done.

A kiss on both cheeks in an elegant way,
she knotted her scarf as they approached her car.
The cold flight of a slivered moon guided her home.

—Toby Alfier

From Goodbye Kisses, Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by MD_JERRY, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.