Coffee Shops

There is something special about coffee shops. The ambience. The grainy smell. The chatter of young lovers and old friends in the background. The stability of it all. The simplicity. Most breakups take place at coffee shops (true fact). The sun blaring down, scalding coffee at my lips, trying to gulp it down to get the conversation over with quickly. Secrets murmured. Coffee cup left half empty (or half full, if you will). Reunions occur at coffee shops. Gift exchanges. Christmas time. New seasonal special: white candy cane mocha with gingerbread biscotti. The smell of creme brulee wafting through the air. Cheap tinsel on the walls. Hungover morning after New Year's Eve: a stop by the coffee shop, a large cup of roasted heaven. Injected like a drug, warming every vein in the body. Then there are days spent alone at the coffee shop. Bent over a stack of textbooks. Fifth coffee of the night, and not the last. First dates at the coffee shop. A mixed sense of hope, and despair in the pit of the stomach. Will he arrive, will he not, will he like me? You can tell a lot about a person not by the way they like their coffee (black- they are upright, triple triple- they are impulsive, macchiato- they are hipster) but by the way the coffee tastes when you are with them. With the right person, the blandest, on-the-way-to-the-cottage roadside stop coffee can taste like it is made from the finest Arabica beans. With the wrong person, each cup of coffee feels sour, rushed, scalding the tongue, without flavour. With the wrong person, a cheap coffee feels like wasted money, which translates into wasted time. The ambiguity of a coffee date. What does it mean? Do you want to go for coffee? Can mean just a disappointing cup of caffeine, or it can lead to romance, or to a feigned friendship, whence you meet approximately once a year to drink and "catch up." One day I know I will be old and drink coffee, and think of all the cups I have drank in my life, and the taste will bear all the secrets, all the sour ones and the aromatic ones... my life will begin and end with this simple beverage, which I have used as a metaphor for all my emotions as a defence tactic against all the things that I've done, that I've felt, and believed, that coffee cannot explain.