juneblog

persimmon

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

tags: espresso-summer

After seeing yesterday’s disappointing coffee, my girlfriend spent the morning before I woke up researching acceptable espresso places in Philly. She landed on Persimmon Coffee in Fishtown. In contrast to yesterday’s scathing coffee review, the double shot I ordered at Persimmon Coffee came out mundane. It was a drinkable espresso. The flavor profile was on the acidic end, verging on being too sour.

The inside of the shop had three small tables and a rack of books on the wall. The sterile white decor added to the feeling that this was a place people should only spend a minute or two at before going on with their day coffee in hand. In line with the interior design of the shop, I only stayed long enough to drink the espresso and jot down a few notes. I had to rush back to the hotel to start a long morning and afternoon of transit and transfers to get to New York City.

philly

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

tags: espresso-summer

Philadelphia on the fourth of July. Hot. Sweltering. I was there for two days, and it felt like the sun had a personal vendetta against every cobble in the road. With temperatures soaring into triple digits by early noon, merely walking three blocks required a thorough lathering in sunscreen.

After gearing up for the sun and making the expedition to the market where the coffee shop was located, I had hoped for a cup that didn’t taste like it had also been sun burnt. Unfortunately for me, it seemed that the heat had penetrated the espresso machine and caused it to return a horribly bitter shot. The coffee reminded me of camping as a little kid and roasting marshmallows over the fire. Specifically, it brought back memories of being too impatient to actually make a s’more, so instead I would stick the marshmallow directly into the heart of the burning white coals, wait forty-five seconds, and then pull it out. Of course no actual marshmallow remained on the stick at this point. It chemically transformed into an inedible black crisp that was reminiscent of something that had at one point had sugar in it. All this to say the espresso tasted well overdone.

I didn’t stay at the market for very long. There wasn’t much air conditioning, and in case I haven’t stressed this point enough it was so hot. So, in a desire to find drinkable coffee and cool air my girlfriend and I walked over to Chinatown and found a bakery with an espresso machine. In a completely predictable manner the bakery had plenty of ac, but devoid of espresso that wouldn’t engage my gag reflex. I should have turned around when I saw that the bakery sourced their beans from Lavazza, but the cruel summer sun certainly made their point clear. More Lavazza beans for me.

Picture of coffee from the market.

Picture of coffee from the bakery.

blueberry muffin

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

tags: espresso-summer

This is the first in the espresso summer series!

I’ve been in grad school for a long time. Part of the reason is I sorta totally changed what I study halfway through. Classic undergrad move, but in grad school. Anyway, there is a coffee shop near campus that I’ve been going to for the past five years. I order the same thing everyday. A double-shot and a blueberry muffin warmed-up for here.

When I say I order this every time it’s not an exaggeration. I go to this cafe like at least three times a week, and I say those exact words every time. Well that part may be a lie, because when I go up to the counter the barista says “the usual?” and I say “yes”.

A few weeks ago, I was in there and barista was training someone new. Before I could even order she turns to the trainee and says, “Oh, that’s the double-shot girl. She orders an espresso and a blueberry muffin.” I think the matter-of-factness of my person-coffee-orderness stuck a moment of self reflection. I really do be ordering the same thing every day from her, but I’m glad I’m espresso girl.

espresso summer

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve written about my love for espresso before. A lot of this blog is written while my body is hyped up on caffeine. Espresso is a major reason why I went through the effort to create this blog. A few months ago I was back home visiting my parents with my girlfriend. We’re at some coffee shop that was recommended to us by a friend that lives in the area. I’m tired. Between a multi-day drive and bringing my girlfriend home to my parents for the first time, I’m exhausted.

So, we get to this coffee shop. Every spot in the small parking lot outside the cafe is taken. Cars packed up against each other with barely enough room to crack open one of the passenger doors. This seems to be a regular occurrence because off to the side in the field of tall grass is a gravely overflow lot with a few spaces left. Connected to the coffee shop building are separate businesses for a cd/record store and vintage clothing boutique. The trifecta.

I order my double-shot and a croissant and sit at small table with my girlfriend. We’re flipping through the books we bought earlier that day talking about novels and my parents. The coffee arrives. It’s bad. The crema is a blackish-brown. It looks like they’ve not cleaned their espresso machine in years. The taste is worse. It tastes like working under the hood of a car smells.

My girlfriend laughs, and says I should write about all the espresso I drink. So, here I am writing about it. This July I am going to be doing a lot of traveling around the country, so I think it’s a great time to document all the different espresso I drink. My goal is to do a post for every unique coffee shop I go to and order a double shot. Hopefully, none of them remind me of licking a terminal on a car battery!

fiction

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fiction is a way for knowing the world. Fantasy is often viewed as the opposite of fact. Fantasy is make-believe, an escape from reality. Here the traditional boundary between fiction and fact blur.

mornings

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

tags: fiction

Vrrrrrrrrzzzzz.

Darkness fills Persephone’s vision, her dream fading away from view and memory as she slowly wakes up. Her bedroom windows filter in the morning twilight giving her just enough clarity to see her reflection in the mirror hanging from the wall.

The image of her body is fuzzy in the mirror. Her head is still recovering from the dream she is rapidly losing memory of. Everything around her is blurry. Dreams and reality not quite distinguished from each other. Is that face in the mirror her face or is it the face of a dream Persephone? Maybe it’s both. Maybe in the moment between dream and not-dream, the two realities become one. Neither able to fully push out the other.

Breath in. The edges of the mirror’s frame begin to come into focus. She can feel her senses slowly awaken like roots extending out into her room. The roots growing out of her body burrow first into the bed and then tentatively into her surroundings. At first everything she sees feels new and strange. The sheets she is wrapped in are her sheets. They are the sheets her parents bought when she was in middle school. Everything in the bedroom feels that way at first. Nothing hers until she sees it and realizes it is.

Her reflection in the mirror is the last thing for her senses to extend focus to. The person looking back at her is unrecognizable. Her mirror must be broken. Breathe out.

Her mirror breaks a lot. She will often gaze into the eyes of the person staring back at her and try and ask who they are. She wants to get to know the person that follows her every movement, but all her attempts at conversation with them end the same. The person in the mirror is just as confused as herself. They ask the same question back to her. Who is she if the person in the mirror does not even know her face?

When her mirror breaks it reminds her of middle school. Of her middle school locker. She had the bottom locker outside Mrs. Espinoza’s math classroom. When she first got the locker she spent an hour after school rearranging her books and papers. Her mom bought her one of those locker organization kits. Hers was red. It included a wire shelf, a magnetic pencil holder, and a small magnetic mirror. The wire shelf made the locker to small for her backpack and the pencil holder would fall off if anything heavier than three pens were placed in it. The mirror is the only thing that she used every year of middle school.

That was the first mirror that she noticed would sometimes break. She would be between classes crouched on the ground trying to dig out the textbook for her next class when she would glance in the mirror. It showed her an image she had never seen before. It looked like her body. They moved like her and smiled like her, but they weren’t her.

She tried explaining to her mom after school one day. “The mirror was being weird again today,” she said to her mom on the way home from school.

“What do you mean Persephone?” her mom replied to her from the driver’s seat of the car.

“The person in the mirror wasn’t me. It’s like that feeling in the morning when nothing feels real yet, you know? Like when you wake up and are all groggy. It’s like that.”

“Are you saying that you feel sleepy between classes, honey? You know you should probably start going to bed earlier. Your new swim team starts practice hours before sunrise. I think you are tired. New school and new team? You should get more rest.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Ok, then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that looking in that mirror feels like a weed being pulled out of the garden. I feel like everything becomes blurry, and I can’t breathe.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

Her shoulders leaned against the window, and she stared out at the trees zipping behind the car. Should she even try to explain what it is she saw to her Mom? Watching the trees flicker in and out of view was more relaxing. She imagined that she was a bird flying from tree to tree at the speed the car was going. Her breathing would be released of its heaviness from the forest canopy. She could almost reach out and become the bird.

Vrrrrrrzzzzz

The alarm clock on her nightstand reads 6:39 AM. Eyes wide Persephone says, “Shit! I thought I set my alarm last night”. Her awareness sharpens around her. She is going to be late for swim practice again. At least her Mom is awake. She can hear her running the coffee grinder machine downstairs. Its sharp buzzing sound rings throughout the whole house. How anyone else is able to sleep through it is baffling.

If her Mom is awake, then that means she probably packed Persephone’s breakfast and lunch. All she will have to do is grab her swim bag, school bag, and run out the door.

espresso

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

i love espresso. warm, energetic, chocolaty liqueur in a gay little cup. i’ve had espresso around me my entire life. childhood, undergrad, and grad school; espresso has always been there.

when i was a kid, my parents had an espresso machine and a coffee grinder. they got the espresso machine as a wedding gift and purchased the grinder themselves. the espresso machine has been pulling shots since before i was born. if there were ever issues with the machine, especially in its later years, my parents took it in for repairs. that espresso machine operated for two decades. it watched me grow into an adult. it was the machine i pulled my first shot on.

my parents wouldn’t let me have any coffee back then, which is totally understandable. who wants an eleven-year-old amped up on life, sugar, and caffeine? i was already bouncing off the walls and riling up my younger siblings. imagine the emotional and financial damage i could inflict on my parents if my antics were supercharged by a double shot of espresso.

but. occasionally, a special sunday morning would roll around. sun shining in the kitchen through the windows next to our table. my siblings sitting at the table arguing about who would get to play on the wii next in between bites of gravy-coated biscuits, and me eyeing the latte placed opposite me in front of my mom’s dining chair. on these mornings, when everyone else had left the kitchen except me and my mom, after we finished loading the dishwasher from the morning meal, she’d offer me a small sip of her coffee.

it didn’t matter to me that the latte had gone in and out of the microwave at least three times. my dad brewed it for her two hours prior to this moment, but my mom, between the stove and table, had little time to actually drink it. all that mattered to me was the sweet forbidden drink and the after-meal conversations with my mom. we could talk about anything for hours, sharing stories over coffee. what are her students up to? were they cute or annoying that week? what antics did those four-year-olds get up to that week? there were always stories to be shared between us—glimpses into each other’s lives.

i think this is why i love drinking espresso. it brings me back to those lived-in sunday mornings with my mom and family. the rich coffee smell floods my body and sends my mind afloat to these memories.

garden

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I tend to this blog like I would tend to a physical garden.

The website is the earth that the garden is planted on. Each post is an element of the garden. Some are carefully manicured flowers. Posts that I have spent a significant amount of time contemplating, researching, and editing. These posts are floral in scent. They are something to sit next to and take in the aroma and intricacy. Surrounding the flowers are the leafy bushes and tall grasses. These posts provide context to the flowers and connect them to the whole of the garden. Some bushes have grown sturdy trunks and leafy canopies. These bushes, now trees, provide shade for plants, critters, and visitors to the garden. Underneath some of the trees there are wooden benches. The benches are great places to take a sit down and take a deep breath and enjoy the scenery.

You can navigate this garden using links as trails between locations in the garden. For example, if you are at a flower and see a nearby bench you want to sit at, then you can click on the link to the bench and go there. After taking a rest at the bench you can go back the way you came by clicking on the flower in the backlinks. You can also go anywhere else that leads to the bench by clicking on a different backlink.

links

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Similar to the trails in a physical garden the hyperlinked text in this blog connects two elements together. The links bring the posts in connection with each other. No one post is one its own. They rely and communicate with each other like grapes growing on a trellis.

Here is an example of a (forward) link: garden.

Pressing the link will send you to a page about the design for this garden. Once you are on the garden page, you can come back to this page about links by clicking “links” the “Backlinks” list. Trails in a garden are meant to be traversed both ways and so to are the links on this blog. Use a forward link to navigate to a new page and the backlink to go back.

You can also find new content by exploring other backlinks. You can use the backlinks to find other fixtures of the garden that are in conversation with the page you find yourself on.

The third type of link is an external link. These are trails that lead outside the garden to a different website. This external link, git leads the GitHub repository for this blog. External links will always be followed by a small square with an arrow pointing outside.

welcome

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

hi :3

I’m June. This is my online garden. Feel free to take your time and explore! Sip an espresso while you meander.

Currently, I am a PhD student studying education. I am using this space to do more personal writing. This garden is a space for collecting my fiction, journal entries, essays, and notes. You can navigate the garden through forward and backlinks.

If you would like to get updates about what I am posting on here, then check out the RSS feed.