Member-only story
Morning Coffee
I am not right today
Today I made coffee without care. I took the measurements too fast and spilled some grounds, and when it was brewed
my hands shook from memories my mind will not remember. That’s how I know alignment. And the color blue gray, made of granite.
Granite in the sky and in the roads and in the way I am gravel today, a little bit here and a little bit there, laid out over
a mile long country road. My hands made coffee without their usual sensitivity. The same hands that once held
a wounded bird, the same fingers that turned the page and stored the sensation of Frederic Henry leaving the hospital into
the rain. I am the hospital. I am Frederic. I am the rain. I drank my coffee this morning while lying on my left side, instrumental piano playing
in my ear, and the world was an ocean washing over me. Some traffic slipped past, but the city was quiet as only a city can be
quiet after a great storm. Memories lived in my fingers and knew where to go and what to do and with whom they wished
to meet. I carried them with me all morning, sometimes in fists and sometimes in the pocket of my sweatshirt while the coffee turned
cold. My hands remembered what my head could not. I poured too much water and brewed it thin. I am made
of carelessness, more patterns and clues than any physical thing, gravel, you would kick me and not notice
I am there. Piano keys feel like dew droplets. Two men walk down the street carrying jackets. The coffee is not perfect but
I will drink it.
