By: Leyelle M.G.

I like my coffee like my men. It’s not really coffee, to be fair—we haven’t had real coffee since the reboot—but they aren’t really men either. Both tantalizing simulations, programmed expressly to agree with your tastes and your temperament. Salty. People used to laugh when I added a dash to my joe. Now I put some on my tongue in the morning before choking down my virtual vittles. It’s the only thing left that tastes real. And I wish the man on my screen would backtalk, for once.

Say anything other than “Whatever makes you happy, User 9.”

© 2026. Leyelle M.G.

Leyelle is an African American and Dominican author and artist from Maryland, USA, raised in part in her ancestral home of the Dominican Republic. Author of the Turnill prize-winning short story “Rain Dance” and the novel Damsel in the Red Dress, she’s passionate about telling a story, in any form or medium needed to express the beauty and complexity of life and human emotions.

Posted July 1, 2026.