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[ 3 minute read ]
The room faded
That Mulberry Molasses you have at the back of the fridge since forever, tastes good in black coffee with a drop of vanilla essence. You can really taste the dark, and strangely seductive fruity promise of a full relationship before a wash of vanilla reason joins the briefly intriguing conversation. The taste is complex and is much like walking on a quiet beach at dawn with the attractive person from the party, not looking for, but open to a hiding place, only to be hailed by the person's partner. You search each other's faces for the same desire you both feel and see it reciprocated and then look towards the cheery but woolly interruption. Again, a glance at each other and then you exhale.
Oooo! The first sip was sharp and bitter, but there was something in it. Ah, perhaps the pairing was not quite right. But just as you find some features in other people queer and then they become quaint with anticipation, the second sip carries with it a knowledge of what to expect; it allows a deeper sense of flavour to be appreciated. It is much more like the long snog after a first kiss on New Years Eve; hungry and explorative; and mutually giving. There is a mustiness like a light perspiration of flavoured alcohol has permeated the freshness of perfume and scent that was applied hours ago. The kiss and the smell is organic. It is almost primeval and immediate in its intent; now it is tasted. With the kiss broken the taste lingers. But it will be a memory of that moment when full desire of an illicit encounter was unfulfilled. A look into each other eyes and then another deep promising kiss, and then the sounds of the noisy room comes back and you are separated by the crowd; the moment and chance has gone.
I drank only one cup of coffee like that yesterday afternoon and didn't finish it; but there was still some left in my large mug, so I made a fresh coffee over the top of it. The mulberry was still there and the vanilla accompanied it and if I had been looking out a window out of a party I would have seen them leaving together as they should do. I would have looked longingly at one of them and known that without the other, the promise would have been filled but the guilt would surpass the pleasure. Despite the overwhelming sweetness it has in itself, Mulberry Molasses without vanilla makes coffee dark and bitter. It fails to sweeten it. Adding a fruitiness it competes for dominance and fails. Instead it highlights the dark and bitter nature of black coffee that even added sugar cannot erase. I can tolerate eating sugar from a spoon but an equal amount of Mulberry Molasses is too sweet. In coffee, it is a quick and hungry grope in a dark alley; good-looking but ultimately cheap and treacherous. In marriage, it is better behaved and mature and must always be only a soft moment of 'maybe' and never something that needs to be secret.
I wonder, if I add milk to the coffee, mulberry molasses and vanilla, I might legitimise my relationship with Mulberry Molasses in coffee. With milk acting as a soft blanket, the vanilla, if I add it, might be the smell of a home that comforts us as we embrace. The sharpness will still be there in the background, but it will be a memory of our first kiss when our teeth and foreheads bumped, and the touch was truly and honestly ours, without guilt, secrecy or regret.