Second Coffee

During the quarantine months, the coffee machine became part of the clock.

I used it two or three times a day.

The first cup meant morning had begun. The second meant enough of the day had passed to need interruption. Sometimes there was a third.

The machine sat on the counter and did nothing remarkable.

That was useful.

The outside world was full of news, numbers, restrictions, and uncertainty. Inside the house, the process stayed the same: coffee, water, switch, wait.

A small sequence.

Reliable.

I had other ways to make coffee, but after buying the machine I stopped using most of them. Filter coffee became the default without any formal decision.

This is how habits often take over. One method becomes easier, then more familiar, then everything else begins to feel wrong.

I even started forming opinions about which coffee was worth buying. Some packages seemed too cheap to trust. Others felt reasonable.

The prices changed. The exchange rate moved. The news changed.

The machine did not care.

It divided the day into small sections.

Years later, I do not think the coffee machine defined that period. That would be too much to ask from an appliance.

But it defined some hours.

And sometimes memory returns through exactly that scale: a room, a cup, a machine, and the second coffee of the day.