The ghosts of coffee's past

I just came back to my desk with my afternoon cup.
Java is my favorite posion - inside and outside of a programming console.
This is usually the time I think of her.
FL.
She's given meaning to every cup of coffee I drink.
We've had so many cups together - that it should have stopped meaning something a long time ago.
But it hasnt.
Her, me and a cup of coffee.
And when you poured all three of us together - it made a good brew that reeked like the friendship of a lifetime.
Its funny - how I've learnt to associate coffee with her.
It was our favorite thing to do.
Sneak out 15 minutes during a crazy day at work - to have a mocha.
We hated the machine made stuff.
Black is bitter but not necessarily less better.
Little cream, heavy on the steam, sugar on the side.
Behind every successful man is a woman.
But behind every successful day or PV that we struggled to get the better of at work or any personal crisis that we helped each other tide ..was many many cups of coffee.
Thats how we became friends at first I guess, looking back.
Coffee brought us together.
But destiny kept us together.
Somehow - both of us ..landed up in Atlanta at this strange cross section in life.
Slowly we discovered that we had a lot more in common, that just our love for the bitter beans.
Books, Philosophies, Inspirations, aggravations, Dreams and failures.
We discovered the city and its many quiet haunts on vague coffee drinking trips.
On many a cold foggy evening, we sat looking at the leaves outside, the wind howling and the rain falling - with a hot cuppa in hand.
And like all good friendships, it was the conversation that energized us and that we got addicted to - the caffeine was just a mere excuse.
And now - its her face that I see in every cup of coffee that I pour.
I am haunted by the ghosts of coffee's past.
The Turkish say that sharing a cup of coffee - commits one to forty years of friendship.
Well - forty is simply not enough for me when it comes to her.
Thousands of miles away, I look at this solitary cup lying next to me, this humid afternoon in May when the clouds threaten to burst at their seams any moment now.
And I know in my heart - that we will share a cup or maybe two..again in this life of ours.
And when it happens - It will mean the world to me.