A portrait of Joshua Jennifer Espinoza drinking coffee.
The coffee is dark,
like the spaces she’s learned to carry with grace.
Bitter, honest, alive.
Each sip is a small rebellion
against the static ache of yesterday.
Her eyes trace sunlight across the table,
finding poetry in the dust motes,
in the slow arrival of herself, again,
this version of her—softly armored,
wearing lipstick like a promise.
She does not speak,
but if she did,
the words would land like feathers
dipped in blood and stardust.
Something you could hold,
but never quite own.
Outside, the world howls its usual pain,
but inside, she makes a ritual
of warmth, of waiting,
of choosing again to be here,
fully.
And the coffee cools.
And she remains.
A trans woman, a poet,
a bright fragment of the infinite,
drinking morning like a miracle
she wrote herself.
