Dispatches from the Cusp of Greatness

By Jocelyn Jane Cox

The caffeine makes you so jittery that your hands flap faster than hummingbird wings. In fact, when hummingbirds pass you on the street, they temporarily stop flapping in order to point, laugh, and even capture you on video. 

People can hear your heart beating from miles away. Your neighbors on every side are constantly banging on the walls of your apartment yelling, “Turn that crappy Techno down!” but you don’t own any Techno music and never have. 

You get a second sink installed in your kitchen that spouts only coffee. When the fawcett of your more-conventional sink breaks, you don’t bother to get it fixed since you haven’t used it in a long time, anyway.

You google key words “coffee” and “intravenous.” 

During the rare nights that you fall asleep, you have fantastical dreams about rivers of coffee, walking toward them, kneeling down, and slurping from cupped hands. You have similar dreams about caffeinated waterfalls and geysers.

When your friends invite you out for drinks, you order coffee. Or you order coffee and a drink. Or worse, you order coffee with a drink poured into it. Furthermore, you are unfazed by the bartender’s obvious annoyance.

When you have trouble falling asleep, you get up and drink a cup hoping it will give you that extra boost of energy you need to close your eyelids.

You plan a trip to Columbia. 

Due to the expense of this habit, you fall behind on your bills. You receive an eviction notice. You decide that your only solution is to date a barista or become one yourself.  Of course, making and serving coffee would severely interrupt the ingestion of it.      

Your friends orchestrate an intervention. They hold a mirror up to your face so you can see how brown your teeth have become. 

Your mother lectures you about the benefits of green tea.