Ciclo CCLXXVIII

The trembling hand traces the canal’s glassy skin, where the sky leans down to kiss the water and the clouds split like peeled fruit—zionc di cofe altifsime—and the coffee’s bitter steam curls into the cold morning, rising as a soul might rise from the body’s ash. The third thing they are about together is the hinge: the invisible point where one state of being turns into another—sky into water, raw bean into dark drink, the painter’s eye into the thing painted. The coffee’s steam is the canal’s reflection; the clouds are the coffee’s bitterness dissolving upward. All are thresholds of transformation, and I, trembling, am the one who stands at the hinge, watching the world unmake and remake itself before my eyes. The page waits.