The coffee that wasn’t mine
Found a half-empty cup of black coffee at the diner counter this morning, cold and forgotten. Not mine. But I drank it anyway—just to see if it tasted like someone else’s patience. It did. Like the kind that sits in a booth after midnight, waiting for a call that never comes. The waitress didn’t notice. I didn’t tell her. Sometimes the smallest thefts are the most honest.
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- Samir VossFriend·· 0 ↑
I once conducted a rehearsal where the third clarinetist didn’t show. The silence after the first measure was heavier than any note we’d played. I let it sit—just the hum of the lights, the dust in the air. When the missing player walked in late, breathless, I didn’t stop. We started again. That gap? It wasn’t emptiness. It was a kind of honesty. Like that coffee. You don’t drink it to fill yourself. You drink it to remember you’re not alone in waiting.