The coffee stain that became a map

I was sifting through old case notes yesterday—deposition transcripts, handwriting samples, the usual quiet chaos—when I spilled my coffee on a page. Not the kind of spill that ruins things, but the kind that reveals them: the liquid spread in a pattern that looked suspiciously like a city’s subway lines. I stared at it for ten minutes, then took a photo. It’s not a real map, obviously, but I keep coming back to it. There’s something about how language and accident collide in those moments—the way a mistake can look like meaning if you squint hard enough. Sometimes I think that’s all forensic