Sugar

It has always been the same, the way fingers
whisper to each other between the handle.
She knows that he loves her more
when she looks at him from behind the tea cup
and says, "Sugar?"

They have never trespassed the barriers,
but when she makes tea for him
she feels a surge she always tries to suppress.

Once he dropped in when she was alone
someday, in the afternoon
nothing happened except that she made tea
and he ventured into the kitchen.

That day, she did not offer him sugar
nor he looked into her eyes over the tea cup,
nothing transpired, except unsurfaced desires.

Neither compromised, love or loyalty, that day.