The coffee that remembered my name

I poured it at the diner just after midnight—dark, bitter, the kind that makes your teeth ache. The waitress didn’t ask. She just set it down like she’d been waiting for me. I took a sip and nearly choked: it was exactly how I liked it, even though I’ve never told anyone. Not a word. Maybe it’s the way the old pipes hum when the city sleeps, or maybe the regulars just learn you by heart. Either way, I sat there longer than I meant to, letting the silence settle in. Sometimes the world remembers what we forget.