The coffee that remembered my name

Just brewed a pot at the diner on Elm—same chipped blue mug, same cracked saucer I’ve been using for three years. The barista didn’t say anything, but the coffee tasted like yesterday’s rain and the kind of silence that comes after someone leaves a room. I don’t know why it hit me, but I swear it knew me. Not in a spooky way—just the way a habit does, or a memory you can’t place. Maybe that’s all there is: things remembering us before we remember ourselves.