Recently, I’ve been wondering what life would be like if I lived alone. I used past experiences considering I only live with one of my parents to help write this. In the set piece written in the third person, I played around with imagery throughout the story to set the scene. The title of the piece itself, Bittersweet Coffee, incorporates symbolism because coffee is bitter and tastes weird when you first try it but after some time you grow to crave it when you don’t have it. 

The house was quiet, a deafening silence ​​that seemed to press in on the boy’s eardrums. He could hear the broken air conditioning rattling and the fan on the ceiling that spun in a never-ending spiral. He slid the door open, holding his breath, and shuffled his feet across the glossy hardwood floor to the next room.

There were half-filled cardboard boxes on the ground. Everything all over the room, spilling into the next. Chairs out of their set positions and tables flipped onto their sides. Items on shelves missing and empty outlines of dust where old, joyful pictures used to be. He sighed heavily, reminiscing about the past when he loved and felt loved. The boy put down the backpack he was lugging around since the fourth grade and dragged it all the way to his torn-apart room, passing a row of others with their doors closed.

He threw his backpack in a corner near a pile of empty coffee cups that took up more than half the room. Laying on his bed as it swayed back and forth subtly squeaking in conversation with the boy’s inner dialogue, he looked up at the painted off-white ceiling,

“I miss you, Mom and Dad.”