The uncle remembers my order before I reach the counter — kopi siu dai, soft boil, no rush. I like that he treats the second cup differently from the first. The first is habit, the way you swallow daylight. The second is permission to stay seated while the tile floor dries from an earlier mop.
Steam lifts between aluminium cups like thin handwriting. The stall radio plays a ballad I cannot name; someone in the back clinks a spoon against porcelain three times, testing rhythm. I watch the kettle neck shiver when bubbles gather — a small drama repeated every morning in every kopitiam on the island, though this one faces the LRT viaduct and I can feel trains pass before I hear them.
There is a table of secondary school boys splitting a plate of kaya toast mathematically. An auntie folds the Straits Times so crisply the crease could cut. I am here because my apartment felt too quiet after a week of rain and I wanted noise that did not belong to me. Kopitiams excel at borrowed noise.
When the uncle pours, he tilts the pot twice — not for show, but to knock loose the last bitter drops. I think about how rarely we allow second attempts in writing. First drafts are supposed to be brave; second passes are supposed to fix. But the second boil is where flavour settles. The first clears the throat; the second tells you what the morning actually tastes like.
Outside, a cleaner hoses the corridor lip near the lift. Water runs toward the drain in threads that catch early sun. A mynah hops between tables looking for fallen crumbs with the confidence of someone who pays no rent. I sketch a sentence in my notebook: patience is heated, not stored. It is not brilliant. It is accurate enough for today.
I stay until the cup empties to a brown ring and the uncle begins wiping counters with a cloth that has seen better decades. The second boil cools faster than the first — physics, or maybe attention. I leave a tip in the jar marked for the washer who comes after noon. Walking home along the connector, I can still taste condensed milk at the back of my tongue, and the day has not properly started yet, which feels like a small unfair advantage I did nothing to earn.
By the time I reach my block the sun has cleared the viaduct pillars. I think about posting this sketch and decide the page can wait until the sentence about patience stops embarrassing me. It never stops. I publish anyway — that is also a second boil.
The lift mirrors my face — slightly steamed, slightly awake. Floor three smells of someone toasting bread. I open the door, set the notebook on the shoe rack, and let the morning continue without me for five minutes. The kopitiam will still be there tomorrow. So will the second cup.