The last coffee in the pot

Every coffee pot keeps a last coffee that no one pours: two fingers, cold, thick, left over.

It sits there all afternoon, like the end of a conversation nobody wanted to finish, like the bread left in the basket, like the minute of courtesy before hanging up.

My grandmother said pouring it out brought bad luck, but she said that about everything: it was her way of asking that we throw nothing away, that we not throw each other away.

Now that she's gone, some days I leave her bit of coffee in the pot until nightfall, out of superstition or memory, which come down to the same thing warmed up twice.