From Her, With Love
She was the kind of woman people wrote stories about, and I think she lived right around the corner from me. I never knew her name, but her coffee order was ingrained in my heart. “Medium iced coffee, decaf. Almond milk, with two pumps of toffee nut.” I heard her say it at the same time every day, despite the barista already having it on the counter and her crude likeness scribbled across thirteen sticky notes sitting beneath the register. She was made to be a muse, every bit of her romanticized by desperate and desolate “artists” searching for meaning, who pinned every whim and desire on a face they’d never see again, that it might live on far away from their self-destructive tendencies. She’d known it, too. In the end, it was the death of her.
