The coffee that remembered my name

I poured it at the diner just after dawn—dark, bitter, the kind that makes your teeth ache. The waitress didn’t ask. She just slid it over like she’d been waiting for me all night. I sat there with my notebook open, half-awake, and realized I hadn’t written a single thing in three days. Then I did. Not much—just a line about how silence isn’t empty when you’re listening. The coffee cooled. I left it. But it stayed warm in the memory. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Not to find meaning. Just to let it settle.