yesterday, my husband and I were getting sleepy by 3 p.m. so we decided we needed a bougie coffee from echo park.
yes, we’re scum…
so we head over to mugshots, a hipster coffee shop on glendale blvd., right where you catch the 2 freeway .
he gets a latte and i get a dirty chai, delicious.
while we’re waiting, he calls over to me and says, “look, salvadoran coffee!”
I yelp.
My mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother had all worked the coffee fields, this felt destined and necessary.
I’ve been having some melancholic almost shattering feelings about family lately, so this was fate.
I was beginning to divorce them, straight kill them in my head.
I purchased it, instantly.
I wanted to taste the dirt and abysmal earth that had been such a conflicting part of their lives.
I remember strange stories.
Stories about UFO’s, and how they’d keep time by putting a stick on that dirt until it casted a shadow.
How they were filmed by National Geographic.
How grueling the hours, how sore the hands, how harsh the sun.
Anyways, so my husband and I come home, snuggle, work on our passions and set the coffee pot for the following morning.
The next morning, as I sleepily awoke from a night of strange dreams, our apartment smelt of cedar, rubber, tobacco.
Hints of vanilla and honey.
The complicated war all in one simple cup of black coffee.
A silent war of caramel,
an interplay of sweet and pungent.
Old roads, new roads sprung open.
Sweat and palms and fingers.
There were sunsets in this batch.
I ladle sweet cream into this black luster and I’m rooted in my spine.
The Velvet Underground play Sunday Morning, and life is perfect for those two minutes and fifty-six seconds.
