A Cold Cup of Coffee
During high school, I was lucky to have several wonderful teachers. One of these teachers taught my English class in eleventh grade and had us all write and share a personal narrative. She read her own aloud first. There is one image from her story that I can still recall today: the hot cup of coffee that no longer warms her heart. This was a relatively significant metaphor, for this teacher came to class every morning with a large cup of Starbucks and was rarely seen without it. She often clutched the cup in her hands as though she were trying to extract the remaining heat from it so that it could travel just a bit further through her body, up her arms and into her chest. She looked like she was trying to warm her whole body with that cup of coffee. But it didn’t work, not after the death of her husband. She explained in her narrative how he had died of cancer soon after their wedding day. It was a tragedy of no small scale. She was left a young widow, and she was clearly still grieving.
I can still remember this image four, volatile years later. It is a sorrowful one, for sure, but most of all it is real. For a while now, I have started to notice a similar sensation each time I find myself holding a cup of coffee. The beverage I drink much too often no longer feels warm, and I am left wondering what it means to feel so numb that I cannot discern the burning of something scalding hot. Like my teacher, I often squeeze my cup of coffee in an attempt to feel and be comforted, but it is to no avail. I want to know when I will feel the warmth of my coffee run all the way through my body.
I want to know when my heart will feel warm again.
