black coffee
The drink is just an excuse to use the cup. Normally, Ayoga prefers their coffee creamy, maybe with sugar or maybe without, but this is how they’ve learned to drink it, this year:
One and a half scoops out of the giant Kirkland-brand can of grounds their roommate bought, to share, and
Two cups of water, brought to a boil and then left to sit for ten seconds, and
A french press, too big for one person but better than anything else, then
Combine and let sit for four minutes, give or take how much longer the song on shuffle lasts.
Ayoga pours the coffee into their cup. It’s too small to be called a mug; it was probably meant for a child, even though it’s made of glass. There’s a scene of Mother Goose — at least, Ayoga assumes it’s Mother Goose, because the goose is wearing a bonnet, has long eyelashes, and a pair of round little glasses perched on the end of its beak — in front of a pond in winter, a little hut complete with huffing chimney far in the background. Most of the scenery is left transparent, but the hut and the bow-tied frogs and the delicate purple ribbon on Mother Goose’s bonnet are colored in like stained glass.
If it was made for a child, it’s probably also meant for milk, to make everything look like snow and ice, winter-time.
If they had any milk — dairy isn’t good for their skin, oat is overpriced, almond is ethically repulsive, soy is always too sweet —they’d drink that instead, just to see if it looks the way they imagine. Or just to have their coffee the way they actually like it best. Ayoga takes a sip, bitter and thin, and leans back to examine Mother Goose’s mud-filled world again.