Ace of Cups, Reversed

A woman walks backwards up the street and into a cafe.

At the door, in a trick of telekinesis, a disposable cup flies from the trash bin and into her open hand.

She sits down at a table. From a briefcase, she produces a stack of papers.

Over the next hour, she uses a special pen to erase her signature from divorce papers, ending her life as a single woman.

This is the beginning.

Periodically, as she works, she spits brown liquid into her cup, eschewing the bitterness she'd held onto for so long.

When she has finished removing her name from papers, and has filled her cup with bitter dregs, she stands and passes her cup to the barista with a word of thanks.

The barista employs a powerful machine that sucks that bitter liquid up with a rumble, and purifies the brown spit into into fresh water.

And from the machine's filter, the barista pulls what remains of the customer's dry, powdered spite, and compresses it into the shapes of beans—beans that are placed in great barrels of the stuff and shipped off to countries along the equator to be transformed into round, plump berries and hung on the branches of shrubs where the plants take that bitterness, shrink it down, and pull it into the earth to bury it forever.

The customer's marriage has a rough start. She and her spouse fight constantly, but over time, they learn to care for each other. The sex gets better and more frequent. They grow more considerate, less selfish, and get younger and younger year after year.

Their marriage blossoms. Years pass by.

And when the woman and her partner can't possibly love each other more, they celebrate with a grand ceremony. All their family and friends are there. They dance for hours. The woman's best friend tosses her a bouquet, which she expertly catches with her back turned. The ceremony culminates with vows of love between her and her spouse.

Then they end their marriage with a kiss.

After the ceremony, the happy couple go about slowly detangling their lives from each other once more. They move out of the same home and into separate apartments. They visit each other less and less.

And after a few years, when their life together is done, they shake hands, and part ways as strangers.

#