What if…Our universe is someone’s cup of pour-over morning coffee? Our planet, one air bubble of many. The galaxy, a swirl of brown foam. The stars, moist grounds that catch the fluorescent kitchen light. The percolated drips sucked into the black hole of the carafe below, each pour of hot water reconfiguring the stars and the planets.

Sugar cubes extinguishing Things That Came Before Us. Cream spiraling to form bands of the unexplainable, to which we give names like the Milky Way. Grains floating to the edges, sticking to the sides for fear the saturated filter will collapse from their weight. Inward, like a reverse Big Bang.

Like we’re afraid will happen if we don’t recycle everything, or we vote for the wrong person, or we worship the wrong religion. Afraid to end up at the bottom of the mug or the top of the compost heap, like all the other discarded universes. Melting and mushing into something rancid, something new, something unlike — or just like — ourselves.

Credits

Vier Stücke für Xylophon: Gassenhauer nach Hans Neusiedler by Karl Peinkofer

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