Thursday, January 22, 2015

hot coffee

I take a sip of my coffee; it's gone stagnant and just above warm, but I swallow it anyhow. I can drink my coffee black when it's piping hot, but anything less than scalding has me choking on the sludge. Funny how a hot nectar can be a warm sludge and a cold poison..

I am frigid and cold inside, cool blood coursing through a cooler body. My flesh is pale and tinged with blue, and I paint my nails to cover the sickly beds beneath them. I emit no heat and am always shivering, bundled in sweaters and seeking an unseen warmth. I buy used clothing, oversized cardigans. I burrow into the warm memories of previous owners, but I can never quite seem to make their memories my own.

I need my coffee so it burns, so I can drink it and hope that the warmth can disperse, that my heart isn't just a morbid diathesis of predisposed sickness, too ill and cold to pump.

I breathe in, breathe out, and watch a single puff of breath leave my mouth. It's winter, and the trees are so bare.

I get up and go to microwave the coffee; there's still some remaining in the pot, but my mother's voice rings through my mind--- something something wasteful, and so I can't bring myself to pour it out. If I want to drink a fresh cup, I have to drink this cup first. I smile briefly when I think of my mother, but then I frown that, here I am, twenty-two and obliging myself to rules that used to make me cringe. That being said, I still follow them. I quickly down the coffee, fresh from the microwave, and grimace. Looking at my watch I see that, yes, it's nearly seven and I poured this cup at six.

A fresh cup. Fresh, hot, soul-warming coffee.