Americano

I drink an Americano, black, at a Jozi

coffee shop. It’s a weekday and I’m

 thinking about art and photography

and going on safari. He walks up, sits. The shop

owner comes out and gives him a coffee.

He drops two packets of sugar in it, a little milk,

stares out into the wall in front of him. I watch his

fingers wrap around the cup tightly. Over our heads,

red-eyed doves coo, softly dropping their calls into our cups.