Ekphrastic Literary Contest 2024 WINNER
1st Place – Youth Poetry
morning coffee (or, it’ll be okay) by Izzy Le Fay
Morning Coffee by Sybille Von Reoder
2:37 am,
my father called to disown me
as the cow i had bottle-raised since she was no bigger than a barn cat
finally had a baby of her own.
i couldn’t feel my toes ‘cause summer hadn’t gotten out of bed.
the gleaming blue light of the coffee maker guiding my path out the door,
i sank to the barn in starless night,
the scrape of straw and concrete on my knees pulled prayers out of me instinctually.
the phone rang — a bitter, petulant song like the clatter of plates shattering on the kitchen tile.
people only call at that hour if something’s gone horribly wrong.
(of course, I picked up. in every lifetime I would pick up.
even though I saw the name that crawled across the screen. even though i felt the dread
latching onto my gut like a vice-clamp.
of course, I picked up.)
“one too many incorrect choices with your life”, he’d said, “livin’ in sin like that”.
i had no idea my father was an expert, i thought this was his first time on earth too.
my cow cried, and the little calf was born on the last venomous whisper of my father’s words.
i named him “jesse” ‘cause it means hope and ‘cause i always thought cowboys were such a romantic notion.
and my cow looked at her baby, closed her wide whiskey-brown eyes, and didn’t wake up.
i sat there, hands slick with blood and grime. his mama wasn’t there to clean him, so i did.
pushing air into his new lungs through sheer force of will
(orphans doing each other favours, i suppose, orphans facing survival together).
my phone lay cracked on the ground, and my father had floated away.
the neighbour’s border collie, a black and white falling star flash against the cornsilk sunrise,
laid his greying snout on my leg and something in his warm eyes said to me “it’ll be okay”.
it’s like the world knew i was grieving. like it knew i had been kept captive by love in seventy different masks. maybe it was the dirtied knees of my jeans that gave me away.
before me sat the tapestry of home,
the pink of my eyes rubbed raw, clawing up to meet the bluest teardrop sky,
throwing their blanket over the dozens of rebellious little wildflowers that sprang up from a golden-dry sea, despite the frost.
tonight i’ll be just as colourful, and tomorrow morning i’ll try to remember what to do with myself.
but there isn’t a rush, no one’s awake yet.
except me and my little cowboy on weak, fighting legs.
we can learn something from each other yet, huh?
i burnt the coffee. one sip and i couldn’t help but laugh. the dog howled along with me.
that’s alright. tonight i am just as colourful as the little world i live in,
and the coffee’s never tasted better.