The Man With No Bones

I brewed a cup of coffee this morning, and I poured milk into it until black turned off-white.

I brewed a cup of coffee this morning, like I did tomorrow, like I will yesterday.

Off-white turning to black, milk removed. Black to off-white, milk replaced.

This kitchen, so nondescript yet so specific. One is unlikely to forget its green walls and yet you’d be forgiven if you couldn’t recall where in the hell you were. Coffee and milk. Milk and coffee. Their scents cling to the walls and build a home where there isn’t one.

I let the coffee sit and grow warm beneath the dimly lit dust of the kitchen ceiling. I remember when it was darker, but light bulbs have since gained strength. Life into death. Death into life. I’m starting to forget which comes first, which comes last.

Not much happens today, which is why I’ll make a few more cups of coffee and burn my tongue on the last one. It’s yesterday that I’m worried about. If only I could skip to several yesterdays later. There’s the building of a shelter, and the dancing through its halls. There are two skulls pulsating to the bass of a song about love.

Will it still sound the same?

I fear love has become loss. Indeed, that is what yesterday will feel like. The day I lost you has become the day I found you and yet it is I who is lost in a labyrinth all too familiar. I navigate this maze with ease but my throat continues to tighten the more that I breathe. Sometimes, I close my eyes— which is starting to feel a lot more like opening them— and I go way, way back. I go back to a childhood ceremony that my mother will describe as an “out-of-body experience” even as I sleep through it with one eye open, the other fluttering so as to never commit one way or the other.

Deep breath. Deeper breath. A breath that turns into a coughing fit. I know I’ll survive this one, for I have already been slain, yet my heart skips a beat in a way my mind never has, never will.

This mission has become a burden unlifted.

I put my trust into a man with no bones and now I am him, rewriting history so I can unlive the future. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day. One day.

“It will be that way everyday,” said the man with no bones. “You will relive it all.” Skeptical, I asked “just as it was?” to which he responded “just as you remember it” without a moment’s hesitation. “And what if I do not?” “No memory is still a memory,” said the man with no bones.

Yesterday comes and I brew a second coffee. It is your first, and it is your last. I am melting. You are a flame licking up my side, a burning sensation I will embrace over the yesterdays to come.

Or is today all that I need?

No one ever quite knows where things go wrong. I certainly never thought that was possible in this case. I refuse to make you my puzzle, but as blacks turn to off-whites and turn back again, I fear time is running out. Rather, I fear time altogether. I fear its inevitability, and the less space I occupy, the more time stretches its spindly arms around me.

You will express a similar concern a few yesterdays from now. “It’s all happened so fast,” you will say. “It’s not a feeling I’m used to.” “I’m right there with you,” I will say, replacing my silence with support. I once placed my hand on your back and gently slid it up and down. Perhaps when this is all over, I will do that again.

But for now, I melt. I melt today, as I melted tomorrow, as I will melt yesterday.

I am milk in coffee. I am a man with no bones.