The Coffee Filter Gesture

Adapted from an NPR interview and essay by Steve Inskeep, 2018.

In the quiet weeks after everything came out, they still lived under the same roof, coexisting more than connecting. Most days started in silence. Until one morning, she walked into the kitchen and found a full cup of hot coffee waiting. It was made just how she liked it.

Next to it: a brand-new box of coffee filters. A small thing. But he remembered.

They hadn’t spoken much that week. But she said the filters, placed carefully beside the mug, felt louder than words.

“I don’t forgive him yet,” she told a friend. “But I drank the coffee.”

That became a kind of rhythm: every morning, a quiet offering. Some were accepted. Some weren’t. But every day, the coffee was there.

“It didn’t make everything better,” she said. “But it reminded me I could still be seen.”

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