Always A Day Away
Always A Day Away
Every night I went, she was there, like a specter remnant of a librarian from decades past. Soft manicured hands stretched into fingers long and graceful with blood crimson claws too long to grasp the delicate metal spoon that stirred her coffee. She stirred more than she sipped making a sound of slurping like a child who just discovered the legal drug that is soda. The chestnut hair all bound up in a net soft like silk, sharpened only by the horns that protruded from her fingernail matching blood red spectacles. Everyone ignored her except for the corpulent waitress ever dutiful to fulfill the promise of the sign that screamed in blue neon of the never ending cup of joe. Everyone that is, except me. I am the ghost hunter and her spirit came back every night to remind me of something, something that I hadn’t yet grasped, or remembered. What was it, if only she’d look up at me, and smile with those java and lipstick stained teeth, or wink through those dated glasses, maybe I’d find that bit of truth or companionship that has eluded me thus far. Maybe if that happened I’d know what it is I am looking for, or she’d remind me that my shoe lace is untied, and avoid a pitfall I was as of yet unaware. Perhaps I could summon the superhuman will and thrust myself up from my own vinyl coffin and plant myself there across the Formica plain that held her notebook, and saucer that held the cup more than she did. No that is an adventure for another night. When I awake with the courage of a thousand young brash enlistees that have no idea what they had gotten themselves into. That day cannot be today for my simple white shirt is not tucked in the manner that some Boy Scout god from my past had taught me, and my tie has loosed it knot and dangled on my chest like the leash on a dog that its owner didn’t care if it ran away. And today my eyes are sunk gray and red back into the recesses of my face that was pocked here and there with the scars of puberty, whose only accent is the unseemly patches of what I had hoped one day would be a beard. No. Today is not that day; it is the day for savoring her from the comfort of my own booth hidden behind my nightly stale donut, and great coffee. Today is the day for watching, and wishing, and dreaming of a life that I could give her, if only I had it to give. And after a hundred or a thousand of such days, it won’t hurt to wait one last day, sitting her pondering the mystery that will be unveiled tomorrow, which as I understand it is always a day away.
Every night I went, she was there, like a specter remnant of a librarian from decades past. Soft manicured hands stretched into fingers long and graceful with blood crimson claws too long to grasp the delicate metal spoon that stirred her coffee. She stirred more than she sipped making a sound of slurping like a child who just discovered the legal drug that is soda. The chestnut hair all bound up in a net soft like silk, sharpened only by the horns that protruded from her fingernail matching blood red spectacles. Everyone ignored her except for the corpulent waitress ever dutiful to fulfill the promise of the sign that screamed in blue neon of the never ending cup of joe. Everyone that is, except me. I am the ghost hunter and her spirit came back every night to remind me of something, something that I hadn’t yet grasped, or remembered. What was it, if only she’d look up at me, and smile with those java and lipstick stained teeth, or wink through those dated glasses, maybe I’d find that bit of truth or companionship that has eluded me thus far. Maybe if that happened I’d know what it is I am looking for, or she’d remind me that my shoe lace is untied, and avoid a pitfall I was as of yet unaware. Perhaps I could summon the superhuman will and thrust myself up from my own vinyl coffin and plant myself there across the Formica plain that held her notebook, and saucer that held the cup more than she did. No that is an adventure for another night. When I awake with the courage of a thousand young brash enlistees that have no idea what they had gotten themselves into. That day cannot be today for my simple white shirt is not tucked in the manner that some Boy Scout god from my past had taught me, and my tie has loosed it knot and dangled on my chest like the leash on a dog that its owner didn’t care if it ran away. And today my eyes are sunk gray and red back into the recesses of my face that was pocked here and there with the scars of puberty, whose only accent is the unseemly patches of what I had hoped one day would be a beard. No. Today is not that day; it is the day for savoring her from the comfort of my own booth hidden behind my nightly stale donut, and great coffee. Today is the day for watching, and wishing, and dreaming of a life that I could give her, if only I had it to give. And after a hundred or a thousand of such days, it won’t hurt to wait one last day, sitting her pondering the mystery that will be unveiled tomorrow, which as I understand it is always a day away.