The coffee was hot. It was just the side of too hot. It was the highest temperature I could tolerate. The warm earthy liquid moved past my lips and down my throat into a vast ocean. The ocean was thick like honey and threatened to pull me under. It threatened to cover my head and keep me from ever breaching the surface again. I heard the voice of my father. He told me to keep trying to start the mower? Then I slipped into the depths. Down, down I went, past ancient ruins and rites of blood and meaning, down below the sea of honey. Down where the honey is so thick it is nearly solid. Then a spark, an amber beacon in the darkness. I began to walk towards the light. My lungs burned. Why was I holding my breath? I breathed deep. The smell of modern roses filled my nose, my lungs and I was there in the room. The room we all know and wish synchronically that we both did and did not know of. The red couch, the opals that covered the ground like so much gravel, the pitch-black crown molding on the white walls. The tray of cheeses and assorted strange fruits waiting to be devoured. They sat there singing. The fruits song was sweeter than any flavor that could have been communicated through taste. Their words were red, orange and that strange color that hangs in the sky between the warm evening sky and the coming night. They told me that everything that was coming, everything that was before, was nothing compared to the bravery that would be needed. They told me that love was nothing like what we had learned from all of the electric talking mouths and their frozen campfire. Then they offered up one of their own. Raising up the fruit on their tiny fruit arms. I took the poor thing. It glowed a knowing love and sang a song that told me it was okay. Then I ate. I ate that fruit, while tears ran down my cheeks. From my forehead sprung a stone and then another and another. All gray, laced with warm-colored veins. They poured from my forehead from my mind. They first piled up around my feet and threatened to bury me. I wretched my legs from the pile and fought for centuries to stay atop that mountain for that is what it had become, a mountain. It rose, stones spilled from my face, and I fought the avalanche for purchase at the top of the rising mass. It pierced the clouds and I began to have trouble breathing. I was freezing! What was I going to do? Then the stones stopped and before me resting on a cloud was a desk and a steaming cup of coffee. I took it and sipped it greedily. It was the highest temperature I could tolerate. It was delicious. I began my work.