15 May Lukewarm Coffee, by Kailee Owens
There is lukewarm coffee on the table.
The couch is old and worn. There are imprints where countless people have sat, ghosts of the time before the storm. Back when people had names and faces had features. Rain batters against the windows. It slides down the frayed edges of the house, down the cliffside, until it rejoins the ocean. Outside this haven, the storm rages on. Outside, it is cold and wild and deadly. The world outside will eat you alive like every fairy tale that has been clawing at your mind since infancy.
A boy sits on his dented couch—was it ever really his? It gets hard to remember these things, especially with nobody to remind you.
And he hasn’t been reminded in a very long time.
He stares ahead, unflinching at the sounds coming from around him. It is a strange nothingness, filled only by the pounding of rain and the silence of his past and present fighting. They’re somewhere in the next room, though he cannot remember the house having more than one. His future is gone, tossed out to be torn apart by the storm. They never let him speak; his voice had been shattered long ago.
The edges of the house are fraying, slipping, sliding into that oblivion that comes from torrential weather and something he can’t exactly name. His meaning of home has changed so much and so often that the foundation has cracked. The cliff is collapsing, the house dying, the ocean is rising. It’s all an apocalypse in its own right, despite the fact that it will never be witnessed by the world.
He recognizes that he is standing at the precipice of what is and what could have been, this space that feels like God’s palm on a stick shift or a martyr’s mouth on a cigarette.
He fiddles at the fraying edges of a Nova Scotian fisherman’s sweater, pretending that his thoughts are his own. They whisper that he put himself here; they whisper that everything he has done is worthless. Every inch of himself, given for the sweet remorse of aloneness, will fray away like the edges of this house and the fisherman’s sweater. He has spent so long, so much for this aloneness. It is all he has done for as long as he can remember. Shatter, lose, rebuild, repeat. Shatter, lose, rebuild, repeat. Shatter lose rebuild repeat. Shatterloserebuildrepeatshatterloserebuildrepeat.
Shatter
Lose
Hang on to those who he thought could stay. Those who he believed he could be alone with. The ones that were supposed to understand him. Friends? Maybe. Lovers? Probably not. He was not a boy built to lie in the shadow of somebody else’s silhouette. They all left, anyway. He held them so tight they slipped from his grasp like grains of sand and found themselves preferring the rain.
Lose again, he supposes.
He sits on his couch, staring forward, though what he is looking for does not exist. His present and past have given up on voiceless words and have resorted to throwing things.
He took the mirrors down; did he mention that already? If he did, he might as well say it again. He took them down because he did not like the reflection in them. Something disgusted him about the wrinkles around his lips and the sparkle in his eyes and the sorrow in his brows. He did not like the map it gave the world.
How can you rebuild a map from wrinkles when all the mirrors are gone and the house around you is collapsing and it’s raining inside and the past and present are fighting and God’s shifted to fifth gear?
He takes a sip of the lukewarm coffee.
It goes down like a saint to the pyre.