A Desire to be Coffee Beans

By Carolyn Chilton Casas

In the hour after dawn breaks and before the sun rises over an eastern hill, I want to be a bag of coffee beans, dark, wafting a fragrance that motivates nations to action, cured with sunlight and rotated by human hands in a far-off tropic land, beloved as they are to those of us who dream of the perfect cup, mine with a dash of sugar and frothy milk stirred in. To be sought after that way, to be tenderly held and desired, to provide warmth, finding that perfect place to belong.