The morning is a short chapter. I have stopped asking it to carry gadgets that will be abandoned by March. What remains is a handful of objects still doing their work when the day has barely introduced itself.

Lavazza is the smell of a kitchen that intends to be inhabited. When the machine grows thin and sulky, De'Longhi's descaler restores the cup. The bottle itself smells of a pool. The coffee, afterwards, smells of coffee. The kilo. The bottle.

Tea should taste of tea. For a long season ours tasted of plumbing, and I blamed the leaf. Brita ended the prosecution. Scales ended a second fiction, in which a handful was a measurement and the recipe was at fault. The Kilner jar clicks shut on whatever good intention survives breakfast. Water. Weights. The jar.

A second machine is not the ambition. One morning that functions is ambition enough.