I can’t stop thinking about

The jar of Douwe Egberts in my kitchen cupboard.

I can’t stop thinking about my patient’s brother.

And how his eyes filled with tears as he told me about his first cup of coffee.

Douwe Egberts he said

(He prefers Jacobs now but that was the best cup of coffee of this life).

I can’t stop thinking

About the desperation in his voice as he pleaded with me to help his brother,

picked up by police on the corner of Victoria and Pine

Exposing his brokenness to the world.

I had ten minutes to spare him at that god-forsaken hour

With the light bulb flickering overhead

(because God and light bulbs get tired too).

He told me how he once pulled,

no dragged, himself out of a life of addiction and mental illness.

He said Mowbray station is the lowest place a man can be.

He said there are only two trains out of Mowbray station

One going to a better life

And one you never return from.

I can’t stop thinking

About how he said we all have our addictions

Exercise, coffee, food, work, sex

(I told him mine is the sound of mountain beneath my feet).

He said he chooses his drugs wisely now.

That said he used to mix mandrax with methamphetamines

Now he mixes coffee with the will to survive

I can’t stop thinking that

The corner of Victoria and Pine

Is his brother’s Mowbray station

Just a short walk from the jar of Douwe Egberts in my kitchen cupboard

I can’t stop thinking

That our system is failing (has failed).

That we are all just the sum of our broken parts

That one man’s vice can be another’s burden

That there are no trains leaving

from the corner of Victoria and Pine