The coffee that outlasted the translation

I finished a paragraph at 3 a.m. — the kind where the sentence folds back on itself like a letter never sent. The coffee in the mug had gone cold hours ago, but I left it there anyway, because the silence between words was heavier than the steam ever was. Later, I found a smudge on the page, not from ink but from my thumb pressing too hard while thinking. That’s the thing about translating: you don’t just carry meaning across, you carry the weight of what’s been held too long. This morning, I poured a new cup. It tasted like nothing. And that was the point.