by Corey Mesler

It's there again.

That sense of foreboding in the first few seconds after awakening. Just a lightning flash, an engram, a menacing presque vu. A glimpse of the terror to come, the terror for all of us.

Once upright the feet hurt as always. As always it takes a few shuffling steps to get the circulation going. The floor is cold, hardwood solid and cold. It is dark, a spill of moonlight near the desk, almost sponged away by the man's bisecting shadow.

Most mornings the black hole is there--Nietzsche's void. The black hole that began with his father's death--three years ago now. A world suddenly incomplete--missing more than just one human life, missing--what? The man didn't know.

Dread descended like a darkling cowl. A dread that blackened thought--the blood-thrum in the man's head was deafening, muting all other considerations. Yet, the man knew that the dread sometimes evaporated--he knew to just push forward into the day and it sometimes evaporated.

First there is micturition, the washing away of the night's collected minerals, the effluvia of dreams. Jetsam. The bathroom is small, its obscurity tomblike. In the dark the splash is reassuring somehow. Then to the sink, cold water to the face, this morning almost unbearably cold. The skin contracts, eyes widen. A slap, senses stirring. The nocturnal is receding, receding. In the man's head there is still night music, still a dreamscape, crisping at the edges.

In the kitchen he lights the burner underneath the kettle. He likes those few seconds of blue flame before he turns on the overhead light, a garish saloon hanger. The burst of light obliterates shadow--the room is a set, a demo room. He looks around. It is his. He is reassured: it is his.

Then he pulls a page away from the daily calendar. It is the 22nd. The number means nothing. Presumably it means something to someone but to the man, no, it is just a number. There is something written on the calendar--is it a message? A code? He can't see without his glasses. It is only a variation on what was on yesterday's page--this is how time works. The familiar slightly altered each day, slightly attuned either negatively or positively or both. Then comes the one day--the day that hits you like a cheapshot. Those days are always out there, waiting for minute calibrations to work their way toward them. Those days are demons, succubi.

He leaves the water to boil, returns to his bedroom. Inside a lock box he finds his pills, one half of this, two of these. He holds the half pill on his tongue--it is a calmative, one he needs daily, sometimes half, sometimes more. The other two pills--small white boats--he's unsure what they do, yet he takes them like vows--he cradles in his in-turned palm. Back to the kitchen and the water cooler. A small glass sits on its edge--the family glass, once a jelly jar. He pops the tiny boats into his mouth also, runs water into the glass, swallows. He imagines they work immediately. He imagines he is flooded with serenity, chemical serenity. Good enough.

From a metal canister he measures coffee beans into a grinder--four scoops. No more, no less. Over the small silo of the grinder he places a dish towel to muffle the sound. He does not want to wake anyone else. Save the dog, a Border Collie, who now trots into the kitchen. She is half-bent, moving crablike in a U, in her desire for affection--tail end moving like a piston. She sidles up to the man's leg for her due. And, rightly, he bends to feel her thick ruff, wrestling her affectionately. She then heads to the back door. The man takes the keys off the hook by the door. The dog moves aside so he can unlock the storm door. This is their morning dance, a practiced routine. This is why he is always up early. He relishes being the only one awake--the day still dark, the day essentially uninitiated.

Underneath the pressure of his hand and the slightly thick towel the grinder hums away--a mechanical groan. What if the grinder failed? What if the electricity were out? Had he just dreamed of that--a blackout, stuck inside an elevator--or a shopping mall--in the dark? He had. It was only nightstuff. Dream powder, residue. His due.

Twice he runs the grinder through its paces. This is part of the ritual--an essential part. The beans must be powdered. He likes his coffee black as midnight, black as gallowswood. As he brushes out the compressed beans into the Chemex pot's folded filter, using an old paintbrush to get every bit and to assure the grinder is clean, the kettle begins its muttering. It used to whistle--they never last. Their music never lasts. The timing is right--the ground coffee is ready just as the water is hot enough. The chemistry can begin. The hellbroth.  

One quick douse to wet the beans. Kettle back on the burner until it gives one meaningful hiss. Then a full pour over the now-dampened and hence coagulated mush. He says the word "infusion" to himself--he doesn't know why. The man turns from the stove with purpose now in his steps.

Two coffee cups, the same bowl-sized coffee cups every morning. This is part of the family ritual as well. If the coffee cups are still unwashed from the morning before, that evening the dishwasher must be filled with other dishes in order to have these cups ready in the morning. One forest green ceramic, one ecru ceramic. The green is his. He measures out 6 small spoonfuls of Sweet and Low© into the bottom of his cup. Then half-and-half, just enough. Too much and he can't taste the coffee well enough, not enough and it's too bitter from him. He got this particular alchemical formula from his wife.

Then the dog's dish, brought in before dark the day before so as to foil the slugs' slimy objectives. A cup and a half of dry. Then a half-can of moist. Hot water over dish and stir. Let sit on the sink edge so it can get together with itself. Meanwhile, the man returns to the bedroom to put his slippers on, retrieve his book and glasses from the nightstand, and put a flannel shirt over his t-shirt. The Chemex coffee pot is now ready for another measure of boiling water, the second and final pour-through. He takes the kettle to the sink and puts in what he imagines is the right amount of water for tomorrow's coffee. This is guesswork--equivalent to the hand-measure of spaghetti that inevitably leads to too many noodles.

Then to the front door, and out onto the front porch. The air bites into his cheeks--he is alive in the moment. It is a temporary good feeling, fleeting, quick as a wren. On the porch is a large tin garbage can with a lid. Inside the can is bird seed, bought in 50 pound bags from the feed store down the street. Here the man goes for a cup full of seed to fill the feeder. Down the steps carefully, hand out to post. It was from these steps the man took a tumble once, turning his ankle, alone on the ground in twisted pain. He is older, that's the message.

The newspaper is on the sidewalk near the feeder, which hangs from the bent dogwood tree. It is not quite light yet--the sun somewhere behind Peabody School down the street. No birds are up--they seem to have human schedules. The man pours his cup of seeds into the feeder, shaking the last bits deliberately onto the ground for the pigeons who cannot sit on the feeder.

He bends for the paper, his back an old ache, time digging there with its cheap spoon. He takes a moment--as he often does--to consider his neighborhood, the world around him. His yard is a mess of fallen leaves--he must turn away an enterprising teenager with a rake three times a week--while many of the nearby lawns are immaculate creations, born of love and horticulture. The kind of attention to living space that eludes him. And the sky--he relishes the infinity of the sky even as it scares him, especially the dawn sky which has its own thaumaturgy. He thinks: the right-before-dusk sky is called The Gloaming; is there an equivalent for morning? He must remember to look that up. This is as much introspection as he allows himself. His thoughts want to turn to his father, to the ghost that haunts him à la Hamlet.

Back in the kitchen, paper debagged and put next to his chair, he picks up the dog's dish, a nice thick olio now, and places it on the back stoop in the dark. The dog looks startled, as if this very playlet did not happen every morning. The man smiles, whispers, "Breakfast," and locks the door.

Pouring the black broth into his cream/sweetener, he simultaneously turns on the warmer in the coffeemaker. He watches until the swirling blackness creates just the right shade of brown: ecru perhaps, which means his coffee is perfect. This is a consideration: the man has stomach problems, lower GI problems, dating back to his childhood. Coffee can, and sometimes does, exacerbate the problem. Yet, he allows himself this indulgence. His only vice, he thinks, though in more honest moments he knows this is self-delusion.

Now, he unscrews the pastry canister on the counter and removes one scone--sometimes store-bought, sometimes homemade, and places it on a plate--it has to be a certain kind of plate, either the nice china white or the decorated pottery. For other lesser enjoyments--garlic bread or biscuit with dinner, say, a plain blue plate will do.

Now, he heats the coffee 55 seconds in the microwave--on cold mornings this is imperative, for the coffee must be hot. While it heats up the man goes to his bathroom medicine cabinet and shakes one aspirin into his palm. More medicine. He takes this preventative every morning because he worries his heart is as frangible as his father's was. Silly perhaps, but there it is. He wants to believe in the aspirin, in its inherent remedial capabilities.

The microwave bell rings--a sound loud enough to wake the family but it never does. Soon, he must pad into his wife's room, find his way to her bedside in the dark, and place a tender hand on her sleeping form. Sometimes he reaches hip, or thigh, and the man is stirred, briefly, this early. His wife will mumble in her waking, warning him away. She is a bear before coffee. In a strange way the man loves this about her and occasionally uses this drunken pantomime to joke her awake. He will begin a long, convoluted story about something he has just read in the newspaper. Or he will try to engage her in a discussion about the children. It's a joke only he enjoys, yet he persists in it.

The especially hot coffee in his hand is a small pleasure, the kind that sews the day together. He relishes the hot sides of the mug, molecules colliding perhaps dangerously inside the pottery, from some unknown and unknowable chemical reaction inside the microwave. It's heat; he doesn't car where from. He stirs the coffee one more time. This morning it is just the right shade, just the right measures. He removes the spoon, making a small eddy in the mug. He watches it swirl, like water going down a drain, like some eternal circle, the turning inside him. He takes coffee and scone into his den and sets them beside him. He reaches for the morning paper, saying a small prayer that the headline announcing what the world is doing, will not depress him. Please, God, no child molesters, no poor soul evicted, no torture anywhere. He says a small prayer that everyone everywhere is all right.

Every day the ritual is completed. The man is comforted by routine, by the sameness of every morning. The house is as quiet as a docked ship. Soon, his wife will stir, her sleepy head full of bees, unable to make speech before coffee. She will appreciate that the coffee is already there for her. She always is. Appreciative. And sometime, in the coming day, the kids will awaken one by one, late sleepers, a  family of them. The man thinks this is good. He thinks that by being the first one up every day, day in and day out, he is adding to the world. He finds he has a role.

The sun is straining now through the muslin curtains. He sets his coffee down and watches the light rise in the room like water in a pool. He has a thought, a brief flash. Today the man will do something different. Today he will try to write it down. He will try to catch it. Today he will write it all down.

<<>>