Coffee

Some days he felt he ran solely on coffee. If he slit his wrist open, coffee, not blood, would pour out, hot and black. The automatic drip went off at 5:30 every morning. By noon he was brewing a second twelve cup pot that would hopefully get him through till midnight.

The drafting table looked as frazzled as he felt. The eraser crumbs covered the floor and felt like soft sawdust under his feet. With only a few days left before the deadline, there was no sleep, only pots and pots of coffee.

He looked over the design, sipping a cold mug of last hour’s coffee that either had coffee grounds or eraser crumbs in the bottom. His soul on paper. The culmination of years of education,study, and hard work. His chance to make a name for himself as an architect. But all he could see were mistakes.