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The coffee has ripples on its once picture-perfect surface.
Above me, a man bolsters his complaints into my ears.
I think I’ve had quite enough, seeing as I stopped listening a while ago.
The man, however, unperturbed by the lack of an audience, carries on as if all is well in the world.
As if his hair, black as days, isn’t dripping with ichor and the remnants of someone unwanted.
His voice is unruly but he holds his head with an inherited grace, earned through years of suffering and an ounce of tranquility.
Head resting on my fist, feet swaying idly under the table while the man with charcoal hair stands, I don’t catch a single word of his speech.
I don’t own regret, nor does it appeal to me to anchor on what I’ve missed, but I cannot help myself when crippling curiosity is handed to me on a silver platter.
“Sir,” I mock, transparency dripping from my tongue, “would you repeat that?”
The charcoal burns brighter at my words, smoke drowning in ire.
I knew then that I had him wrapped around my finger, and it was only a matter of time until I put the fire out.
You could say I was akin to gasoline, forever keeping the lines burning until there was nothing to burn and I had won.
Or, like water, where my own flame may or may not put someone out, when it’s a gamble between liquids: who will burn, me or Charcoal?
But, no matter the situation, Charcoal will always burn seemingly how I want him to.
Water or gasoline, he will burn.
“I said,” Charcoal begins (he was going to die out at this point), “Get your grimy wet fingers outta here, man!”
And there I shudder, stunned by the flames that have swept out from under my nose.
I clear my throat and test the waters. The smoke lays heavy as a reminder in my lungs. “What ever do you mean?”
I finally stand, legs shaking like the rippling coffee and the echoes of previous words long forgotten.
Charcoal sighs, eyebrows drawing into a thin line.
“Leave!” he says, “You never listen to me, you’re always the same, so leave.”
I frown, taken back.
In my airways, I can feel the smoke retreating, yet the mountain of orange continues to rise.
Charcoal, unfazed, points to the exit. I let my feet carry me, back heavy and lungs full.
When I get home, coffee and insults long forgotten, my tongue is sour.
I couldn’t let go of the smoke, refusing to exhale.
I couldn’t give up all that I had left.
With the lungs of a decade-long smoker, I make another cup of coffee.
It stews in the filter, and every bead of cloudy air that sweats from the machine leaves my hairs standing on end.
Deep in my organs, ash sits, festering.
A mile away, Charcoal smiles to himself with an igneous rock spinning in his dominant hand: left.
I, on the other hand, take the now finished coffee from the machine with my right.
With the lungs of a smoker, I decide that I am ethanol.
Invisible to the naked eye, but just as deadly all the same.