Coffee
	I look into the window dismally.  I see an aged, wrinkled man, wearing an old, tattered hat.  I watch, gloomily, as the wisps of smoke curl around the end of cigarette and the cherry red coals glow brighter each time he inhales.  His eyes show a sense of exhaust and indifference, and he could use a shave.  The portrait reflection is speckled with small rain droplets, and he is surrounded by the foggy mist that lurks after it has rained heavily.  I turn my back on him, trying to lose the image.  I try to bring up my self image, the me of a yesterday long ago, but I can’t.  The fingertips of my mind can merely brush at them, pathetically trying to grab them, without success.  
	I try to reach at what I have gained, what I have accomplished in my life, but I cannot conjure anything up.  I think of Jane and the children, and faintly smile.  My smile fades, just like my youth, as I am brought back to the present.  I have failed my children, and I have failed myself.  I wonder when this bitterness began.  I close my eyes, open my mind, and remember, with taunting regression, what brought me here.

	As I look back, it seems like it was years ago, sadly, it was only yesterday.
	It was a beautiful morning, the sun seemed brighter than ever.  I willingly allowed the bright rays to touch my bare arms.  I felt warm, inside and out, and despite of all my bitterness, I was glowing.  I was happy.  I sat on the porch with my cup of piping hot, black coffee at my side, as I casually skimmed through the morning newspaper.  My wrinkled skin almost seemed fresh that day, and there were no bags hanging droopily below my eyes.  I stroked my freshly-shaven skin and grinned, ear-to-ear.  
	I folded up my newspaper, took a long gulp of coffee eagerly, yet leaving it unfinished, and strolled across the street to retrieve my mail.  The box was bursting with it, though most of it was advertising and bills, as always.  I didn’t really care, it was a nice morning.  I went into my house and sifted through, ads in the garbage, bills on the table.  It was a tedious job, paying my bills, but it was routine, and I forced myself to get out my check book.
	That’s when I saw it.  It was in a blue envelope, the address written neatly, in the unmistakable handwriting that belonged to my daughter, Alice.  We hadn’t talked in years.  The letter was formal, it always seemed, on the rare occasion she wrote me, that I might as well have been a co-worker.  Though, through the business tone, affection soaked through, along with sympathy, and, maybe, forgiveness?  She was asking me to come to Calgary, to see my son Jason for the last time.  
	Jason had had cancer for years now, but I had not realised how serious it had become.  Jane died of cancer, I was in a state of denial.  Now my son would be taken from me?  I couldn’t bear it.  I hadn’t been able to lose Jane.  I should have been stronger.  Jason and Jane were in their teens then, they had needed me to be there for them.  I was a coward, I ran away from them, from Jane.  I ran off across the country to be somebody else, to forget my pain.
	Now Alice was asking me to face it, she was asking me to be an adult.  She was still only a child really.  She was naïve, she did not understand the adult world.  I pushed the letter aside and moved on to the bills.  When they were finished I went out.   To the laundry mat, to the general store for cigarettes, grocery shopped, and eventually found my way back home.  The coffee was stilling sitting on the porch.  I hurried into the house past it, though, as the beautiful weather withered, and bitterness lapped at my ankles.  
	As I walked in, I tried desperately to ignore the letter once more.  It had been teasing the edges of my brain all day and now, in late afternoon, I picked it up.  My hands shook as I read it over.  I hadn’t been there for Jason when he needed me before, and now on his death bed, I knew what I should do.  But the old bitterness of my cheerless life came back to me, and I refused to let myself give into more pain.  Grown men do not cry, especially in front of their children.
	As the rain began to tinkle against the tin roof, I remembered the coffee.  I hurried out to get it, eager to turn my back on the letter, on feeling itself.  As I stooped to pick it up, a crack of lightning formed in the sky, and thunder followed immediately.  It pounded into my ears, far more loudly than expected.  I flinched, and dropped the coffee.  It smashed to the ground, the mug shattering and spilling the now cold and dark liquid across the wooden floor of the porch.
	I don’t know if age had turned me crazy, or a storm had turned me sane, but suddenly, in my mind, I understood everything.  As I attempted to pick up the pieces of the mug, a tear rolled down my cheek.  I was a cup of coffee.  The mug symbolized my bitterness, strong and solid.  The rich dark coffee were my feelings, my identity, my ability to love.  They were trapped in a mug of unhappiness, and turned bitter and cold over time.   The storm was a strong version of the letter, of what the letter should have been, a wake up call.  A call that smashed  the mug, allowing the coffee to spill out onto the porch, dripping down the wooden steps, out into the world.
	I arrived in Calgary very early the next morning.  I had come as quickly as I could, but sadly, it was not soon enough.  When I got to the hospital, Jason was dead.  He had passed away during the night.  Alice had gone home, to nurse her inner wounds.  I’d never been too crafty with first aid.  A tear rolled down my cheek as I remember how caring Jane had been.  I would not miss this chance.  I missed it twice for Jason now and I would not miss it again for Alice.  More tears came out, and soon I was crying, but I didn’t care.  
	I walked confidently out of the hospital and straight to Alice’s house.  Suddenly, my courage failed me.  I stopped in front of her house.  In front of the window, as I realised who I was.

	The recollection is daunting.  I knock against the window, startled at the loud sound it produces, and jolt.  Why had I come here?  Alice does not have forgiveness left for me.  I hated myself, my reflection portrays it sickeningly.  Why shouldn’t Alice feel the same?  She had not asked me to come for her, she had only said Jason wished to see his father before he passed on.  She wants no part of me.  I turn away from the house and began to walk away.  I stop, as I hear a small sound behind me.  I turn back towards the house.  There is a light in the window now.  Alice is standing in the doorway, tears in her eyes.
	"Can I come in?" I whisper.
	"Sure, I’m making some coffee.  It looks like you could use some," she says quietly.
	"Is it hot and fresh?" I ask nervously.
	"Just made it," she says, her face brightening upon the reunion.
	I wrap my arms around her and stoop down through the little door. I am moving out of the rain with Alice, tears sliding down both of our cheeks.

	If I was a cup of coffee right now, I would be served in a styrofoam cup; piping hot, fresh coffee pouring down my sides, and into Alice’s heart.