when i almost forgot my own name this morning

Photo by Alla Hetman on Unsplash

morning shows up anyway i dig through yesterday’s pockets for a name, for a reason to sit upright — nothing.

the coffee cup still clings to the table with the same stubborn brown ring it’s been wearing since 2019. but what if the table is lying? what if that stain is just a memory that forgot how to leave?

darkness can’t even arrive. the bulb burned out hours ago and i’m still waiting for the little whatsapp tick that stopped sounding years back. time freezes because nobody’s left to owe.

i try to picture pure emptiness, a clean, honest void, but what slips in instead is the smell of burnt toast drifting from my mother’s kitchen and the neighbor’s scooter that always stalls right under my window at seven sharp, cursing the morning like it’s personal. and just like that, the world barges in — turns out i’m too greedy to disappear cleanly.

so i flick the stove back on, boil water i probably don’t need, spoon three reckless heaps of coffee because i’m terrified of anything that tastes like giving up — like weak tea, or silence. at least this mug still pretends to have weight in these unreliable, shaking hands.

if tomorrow i actually vanish, let that brown ring on the table be the only evidence that someone once sat here, too stubborn to dissolve, too attached to the smell of burnt toast to ever become nothing.