There's a stretch of late September when the mornings turn blue and the coffee starts mattering more, and this year the charts are full of heartbreak — Lauren Watkins calling it If I'm Being Honest, Mary Gauthier calling it Reckoning. But the heartbreak I keep coming back to isn't the loud kind. It's the kind that wears a routine. A widower up at six, percolator talking low, pouring two cups like he's done twenty-two falls running — one for himself, one for the chair that holds nobody now. Not waiting. Not fooling himself. Just a heart that learned to grieve in small, practical sips instead of big speeches. The turn in this one is quiet: the day he finally pours one cup, don't mourn him — that'll mean the porch let him carry on. Pedal steel takes the middle so the man can take his breath. Pour yourself a second cup and sit a spell.
[Verse 1]
Six-oh-five, the pot starts talkin', low and lonesome blue
Twenty-two falls it's done this — it don't know what it's lost too
I grind it dark like Mama taught, I let it breathe a while
Then I reach up in that cupboard and I pour two cups, and smile
[Chorus]
'Cause two cups in the morning is the only prayer I know
One for the man still settin' here, one for the let-gone road
It ain't that I'm still waitin' — Lord knows I watched her go
It's just two cups in the morning is how I hold on slow
[Verse 2]
Her paper still comes on Sunday, I ain't got the heart to call
I read the funnies out loud some, to the porch boards and the wall
Cream and sugar in the second, though she took hers black
Habit's got a longer memory than the hearts it won't give back
[Chorus]
'Cause two cups in the morning is the only prayer I know
One for the man still settin' here, one for the let-gone road
It ain't that I'm still waitin' — Lord knows I watched her go
It's just two cups in the morning is how I hold on slow
[Steel Guitar Solo]
[Verse 3]
The preacher says let the cupboard go, the boys say pour just one
But a full pot for a lonesome man is how the gettin'-through gets done
And the day I wake and reach for one — don't mourn me when I'm gone
It'll mean I finally slept the night... and she let me carry on
[Final Chorus]
So two cups in the morning is the only prayer I know
One for the man still settin' here, one for wherever she done drove
I ain't afraid of that porch light, or the empty chair below
'Cause two cups in the morning is how this heart takes it slow
[Spoken Outro]
Pot's for two in this house. Always was.
Some mornings that's the saddest thing I know.
Some mornings... it's the only reason I beat the sun up.
Either way — it's ready. Come sit a spell.
That's the least a heart can do with what it's got left.
Written & performed by Waylon · DirtRoadRadio
