Ode to My Morning Coffee

No day begins without your robust flavor,

you sweet little drupe,

mislabeled “bean” by a world too tired to care—

though you were born in fruit,

a cherry’s hidden stone,

a pit that quickens my pulse.

I count you as sacred,

stacked somewhere between bread and breath,

misfiled in the pyramids of need—

not quite food, not quite ritual,

but something holier than both.

And, when I order at Starbucks,

it’s a trenta, and I demand they fill it up,

no restraint, no elegant moderation—

just liquid adrenaline

sloshing over the rim.

Before you, I am unfinished—

a body without voltage,

one of the walking dead.

After you, I spark,

I clatter,

I am among the living again.

O coffee—

black oracle in a ceramic altar—

I praise your bitterness

and take it in like communion.