Breakfast with Umberto Eco

The cherry belladonna waits, rehearsing its innocence.
Its red performs sweetness while meaning something else entirely.
Eco would call this the first betrayal of the sign.
I taste it, knowing the lie is part of the flavor.
The salad shifts its intention mid‑leaf.
Each stem practices a small cruelty of interpretation.
The bowl becomes an open text that refuses closure.
I read it, and it reads me back.
The black hyacinth juice darkens further.
It refuses to signify thirst.
It prefers to signify refusal.
I drink it, and the glass interprets my hesitation.
The juice hums with semiotic malice.
Eco whispers that semiosis never ends.
I swallow the warning.
No coffee today.
No coffee to stabilize the syntax of the morning.
No coffee to anchor the drifting signs.
The absence becomes a cruel grammar lesson.
It teaches me that clarity is a superstition.
It teaches me that meaning is a temporary guest.
I accept this with the resignation of a tired reader.
The table shifts its ontology.
The chair refuses its own definition.
The room becomes a dictionary with missing pages.
I sit inside the omission.
Vanilla gunpowder enters like a contradiction.
Sweetness and threat sharing the same breath.
Eco would call it a semiotic short circuit.
I call it seasoning.
The powder settles like pale accusation.
It reminds me that every flavor is a metaphor.
And every metaphor is a trap.
The salad tightens its logic.
The juice loosens its truth.
I remain between them, untranslatable.
Happiness arrives late, as always.
It carries no documents.
It refuses to justify itself.
Eco smiles: happiness is also a sign.
A slippery one.
A cruel one.
It sits beside me, unbothered by my confusion.
The salad envies it.
The juice ignores it.
The vanilla gunpowder pretends not to notice.
Happiness stays anyway.
It stays longer than permitted.
It stays without permission.
It stays because permanence is its rebellion.
I take another bite of cherry belladonna.
It changes meaning mid‑chew.
I do not.
The black hyacinth juice deepens its opacity.
I drink the darkness as if it were grammar.
Still no coffee.
The absence sharpens its cruelty.
Vanilla gunpowder softens into paradox.
Happiness refuses to leave.
The table becomes an encyclopedia of misreadings.
I finish the meal, but the meal does not finish me.
Eco’s theory lingers like an aftertaste.
And forever begins with a sign that refuses to mean one thing.