The trick to not spilling is to operate as if the cup is empty
and not brimming with almond milk. Hold it in your hand
but not in your mind as you stride across the pavement
to your neighbor’s door, your neighbor who, last summer
at the block party, passed you a tablet of Acetaminophen
that stained both of your palms pink, the sugar coating
made soft by your warmths, before you swallowed it
with a mouthful of pilsner. The trick is to focus
on the pitbull’s red collar, its melon-headed smile,
at the browning rhododendrons, at the throbbing
of your zits and the scattered nettles, lawn ornamentation
jazzing up a sliver of side-yard. Ignore the cup, instead consider
the psychiatrist telling you that one day you would see
a pigeon or some kind of fern, a sunset, maybe, and finally
really see it, through the muck and gloom of your self-
preservation, like a rook rifle driving a diamond shard
into the very center of your skull, see that you were a part of it
the whole time. Realizing you had misheard her, realizing
she had not said apart. Ring the bell. Your neighbor is eager
to tell you about her road trip as she mixes up the batter.