MOKA POT, REVERSE LAYLA ELQUTAMI
She considered their love, until the coffee boiled over, finished. An espresso shot is always only for one. Forever. How one could consume and think and feel and then, still, give afterward. Singular in its interpretation. This was a careful act. Like poetry. Literature was a thing of the world and thus of the two of them. She went through novels, quickly, ate them and poured them back out to him. Biographies, essays. Stacks and stacks of them, collected. These texts back and forth continued. In past months, he had taken issue with how their correspondence was just her fervent summaries of books he would never read. Why send her this? Something so bitter. Small and contained. Even if there is espresso. There comes a point at which reality cannot sustain one point in time, stretched out. I am not built for this. No, she would counter. I’m sure you did. She imagined him, over the phone: Did you like it? Waiting, she daydreamed. With a twist, the skeletal chamber became a steaming thing atop the stove. Attached the hexagonal base. She had packed coffee in the metal filter, trying to understand. The gift was what most gifts are, how underneath someone is trying to tell you something. So she had. Uncovered in green packing foam. Shining aluminum. The device itself. But he, not figuratively, had entreated her to try it, sent over the right grounds in European cans. Nothing was worth all these minutes. She stayed there watching for a long time.
36 • spring 2021
