crema me this
espresso, Father Carpenter
The second residence I ever lived in was a fourplex. It was tall with balconies fit for a rapunzel. I was almost five then, I built ant farms and plucked bloomed flowers for the smell of it. I caught bees and wasps with repurposed dish liquid bottles, scraping my knees to my mothers’ dismay.
I was almost five then and it was summer, school was out with days of neighborhood adventures before me. on those days, i’d wait for a supervised trip to the candy store, for an afternoon treat: something sweet, juicy and chewy in all the right places. sometimes, the first sip of a coffee is the same – an afternoon treat, as it was with this espresso.
Standing on this courtyard ground in Berlin reminded me of when I was almost five, playing on summertime sidewalks and in a backyard behind a fourplex, where tended weeds could never obscure how my knees got scraped again and again.
This espresso at Father Carpenter made me want a lovable scar, so that I could find it and remember how flavor played with me on this day that felt like summertime.
The first sip was a tart green apple, whose acidity was a gentle slap into awakened flavor, the second sip was juicy, stick-ily running down its outer skin and mine. then the third and last sip happened like oxidation to an apple, quick, taking over its flesh, as if it was a Stranger Thing.
I slid from tart to sweet, plunging deep into a world of grape now and laters. I thought, aren’t I here in Berlin? And, aren’t I. memory years away from L.A., the fourplex, and our neighborhood candy store? Yes I was, but this took me back, back there, only now I was scraping the bottom of the demitasse and not my knees.