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.