Before the Coffee Wears Off

Seventy-four poems, prose pieces, and quiet confessions - written in the dark, in cars, at 2 a.m., in the gap between who you are and who you're pretending to be.

S. V. Tiempo started posting fragments of thought to an anonymous Instagram account in 2016, never expecting anyone to read past the first line. Seven years later, they've become something the writer didn't set out to build: a single, unfinished argument with himself - chaos against order, love against ruin, the safe life against the one that actually feels like living.

This collection doesn't follow the dates the pieces were written. It follows what they have in common - the ghosts underneath them. You'll find poems about loving someone you're afraid will leave, about grief that shows up uninvited, about the specific loneliness of feeling everything and saying none of it out loud. And you'll find the moments in between: the ordinary Tuesday, the second cup of coffee, the small, stubborn decision to keep going anyway.

If you've ever underlined a stranger's words online because they said the thing you couldn't, this book is for you.