Cup of Coffee

I have coffee.  There's a rich, woody browness to it, the taste, the smell of wet grounds, warmed.  The atmosphere hit me  as I came into the house, not thinking of anything but the fuzz of the end of the day, and the love of a small hurt dog. 

She kept sniffing at nothing patches of grass, desperately, painfully.  To me, this little dog's sweet pain is rather like love, reminding me of myself when as a child, I would think eternal things and struggle to answer eternal questions like the one she struggles with.   The sniffing is to smell the answer and as a dog, this is the most likely source of reality. 

Darting one way on the short, dusky, black leash and then pulling me to the next patch of grass, quickly, never looking me in the eye, her nose swoops and dives.  There is an ugly undercurrent to this madness, but she doesn't let me see, the hurt only glinting from her eyes.  A little hurt dog is a little upset over me kicking her butt at loving people.  She is upset that things are not always the same.  She is upset that I knew something she didn't. 

All this I drop as a skin, as exhausted, we leave the fuzz of the outside for the fuzz of the house and smell the soft, creamy scent of coffee.  It sours in the mouth after a few minutes.  I know this is my fault.  My eternal questing pain.  My doggy life.  

The atmosphere sharpens for a second, then lies down dull, as if the boring had defeated the sharp sudden pain of life.  Neither atmosphere is to my liking, I prefer slaved-over grit to outbursts of pain or a calm that can't quit. 

So to quell the sour taste, I take another (now lukewarm) gulp, but it's too late, everything is words, words, words on a page, spirited away by man's first time machine, the written word. I want to retract into my shell and hide from the world, but it's too late, I'm a slug, shell-less and addicted to writing. 

The third to last gulp tastes like sand.  I'll shove this grit you like so much into you, says life.  Gritty, sandy, the physical sensation is nothing like the spiritual happiness I had attained coming into the house. 

The second to last gulp, came wrapped in Easter tin foil.  A surprise within a surprise the wooden molecules of the particle board desk, itself.  But the aftertaste is ancient and profound 

The last sip stains my consciousness like a tattoo.  Milky and gritty in one bundle, I dread the last gulp.   I dread the end of things, and the coffee seems to stick into my gullet like a powder.  I know I'm going to get another cup.