Evening Ceremony

At 4 PM I’m nervous, at 5 PM nervous. The computer screen in front of me, filled with complicated sentences about things I don’t really care about, starts to swivel and whole paragraphs become mere stripes on a white canvas. I keep glancing at the clock, but the glowing red numbers refuse to change fast enough.



Finally, at precisely 5.47 PM, I get up with a sigh of relief and turn to my part of the dorm room. The water boils up quickly in the already prepared kettle – all that’s left to do is get the Can.



The Can isn’t some sort of family heirloom; it has value only to me. I open the top gently, sniffing the edge, looking for the aroma that completes my every day. When I find it, the world seems a better place somehow. One spoon-full of the dark-brown powder and two spoon-fulls of sugar have helped me through quite a few of study-filled nights.



I pour the water in solemn silence, savouring the moment – how the water makes a more hollow sound, when it’s hot, how a few lost bits of powder flow up and how the water reaches that invisible mark, where the cup is almost full, but not quite. That’s my queue to add cream – the cheapest one in stores, no doubt, yet as sweet as ambrosia on certain nights. Most people shrug in disgust, when I take a full sip or two from the carton, but I enjoy the creamy taste it leaves and the faint memory of childhood it gives.



After a couple of circles with a spoon, the coffee is finally done. It tastes different every night, because I never can remember how much cream to put in, but that doesn’t bother me. I enjoy the ceremony itself – the little part of life I think I understand.