Morning coffee

More about Morning coffee

Inspired by https://deepdreamgenerator.com/ddream/n8m3amqmdq8

The coffee machine had been growing flowers again.
It was a problem nobody at the factory wanted to discuss, especially the engineers, who had spent thirty years designing machines that would never do anything unexpected.
Then one October morning, a lily came out of the steam pipe.
It was followed by three red flowers, a white blossom, and several yards of something that looked like the wiring from an abandoned telephone exchange.
The machine had apparently fallen in love with a garden.
I stood there in my slippers, holding an empty coffee cup, wondering whether I should call a plumber or a botanist.
Outside, the sky was the colour of yesterday's dishwater. Somewhere beyond the clouds, the sun was going about its business without asking anybody's permission.
I pressed the button marked COFFEE.
A small red flower opened.
I pressed it again.
Another flower appeared, looking slightly embarrassed.
This was becoming expensive.
I had bought the machine for forty-nine dollars at a garage sale from a woman who said her husband had disappeared into the electrical business.
She didn't elaborate.
I wondered if he was still in there somewhere, arranging flowers.
The machine made a peculiar humming noise, like a refrigerator remembering its childhood.
Then it began to rain petals.
They fell across the kitchen counter, the floor, and my slippers. One landed in my coffee cup, where it sat looking like a tiny boat waiting for the ocean to arrive.
I thought about the thousands of mornings I had spent drinking coffee without ever considering the feelings of the machine.
Perhaps it was tired of making coffee.
Perhaps it wanted to be a meadow.
I could understand that.
There were mornings when I wanted to be a meadow myself, preferably somewhere in California before the interstate highways came along and divided everything into places you were supposed to be going.
The machine sighed.
A long metallic sigh came out of its pipes, followed by a single drop of coffee.
It landed in my cup with the solemnity of a religious ceremony.
I tasted it.
It was the best coffee I had ever drunk.
It tasted of rain falling on an abandoned railway station, of flowers growing through the cracks in concrete, and of something I had forgotten when I was seven years old.
I waited for another drop.
Nothing happened.
The machine had apparently decided that one drop was sufficient for the entire human race.
I sat down at the kitchen table and watched the flowers move gently in the warm air.
Somewhere inside the machinery, a little motor continued turning, although it no longer seemed connected to anything useful.
I liked that motor.
It reminded me of myself.
By noon, the kitchen was a garden.
By evening, the flowers had reached the ceiling.
The following morning, I found a small handwritten note among the petals.
It said:
Coffee is only an excuse for morning.
I never discovered who had written it.
But I stopped pressing the button.
And every morning after that, the machine gave me one perfect drop of coffee, while the flowers continued growing toward a sky they had never seen.