Coffee and Tea for You and Me by Edcel Javier Cintrón-González

POETRY

Coffee—bold, restless,
always chasing the next sunrise.
Tea—soft, steeped in calm,
a stillness I could never touch.
Together, we brewed something rare,
steam curling between us,
our differences dissolving
in the warmth of each other.

Those days in my tiny kitchen,
hands brushing over chipped mugs,
were the kind of simple miracles
I never knew to dream of.
You laughed at my need for caffeine,
I teased your devotion to patience.
We met in the middle,
your tea kettle and my espresso machine
living side by side.

But visas are cruel arbiters,
and you left with promises
as fragile as porcelain cups.
I wrote you letters in the language of us,
sent packages infused with my scent,
my heat, a small reminder of my bear body,
Peludo y lleno de amor,
hoping to steep myself into your life miles away.

I called at odd hours,
poured my energy into every empty space,
tried to fill the growing gap
with all the sweetness I could muster.
But you—
you sipped from my effort like a cup gone cold,
never offering to refill.
Your silences stretched longer,
and I burned myself
trying to keep us warm.

Now, I sit with my coffee,
strong and bitter,
and wonder if I ever really knew
the taste of you.
Tea is delicate,
a fleeting comfort,
but coffee—
coffee lingers,
its edge a reminder
that I am still here,
even when you are not.

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Edcel Javier Cintrón-González is a proud Puerto Rican, and scholar who is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Studies with a focus in Children and Young Adult Literature. When he is not working on academic things, he enjoys cooking, playing video games and writing about them in the website Gamers with Glasses, and writing his monthly children’s literature review in Spanish for the Palabreadores Newsletter. Edcel is the author of Irma, Maria, Fiona, and Me published in May 2023 by PRESS 254/Spoonfuls, and is a featured speaker for TEDxNormal 2024 where he talked about the importance of hurricane narratives.