Cafe Everyday: Day 103
Egg sandwich with ham and cheddar on a garlic bagel, a mimosa, coffee.
Monday mornings are probably my favorite mornings for breakfast. The taste of the food, it’s the taste of something conquered, a sign that I’ve made it.
Even though I don’t have a regular schedule, Sunday nights are pretty rough. It’s not the return to the workday grind, the end of freedom, though when I used to do the 9 to 5, 7 days a week thing, I definitely understood that. Yet, it was also the same back then.
Sunday nights are the longest nights. The darkest nights. The nights when the soul is restless and the heart weary. It’s the culmination of all the things that didn’t happen that weekend, the calls unreturned, the drink-ups you missed, the time spent alone when you suspect you’re the only one. It all hits on Sunday, the feeling that Friday night was wasted and Saturday just passed aimlessly, and that morning when other people were having brunch with either friends they had been wanting to see or with the person they woke up next to that morning, new acquaintance or old, the knowledge that I sat there and ate a child’s breakfast, something I told myself was rock ‘n’ roll like Elvis, but that really only a dumb kid orders and tells himself is okay--that knowledge has the sting of a thousand wasps. And so Sunday night, when a burp comes and it tastes like peanut butter even though I’ve brushed my teeth twice, it’s just clear that the yellow stains of shame are something that will never be polished off.
I watched the window today, expecting maybe I’d see that sight again, see the woman I saw on Friday. Like I waited two days for potato pancakes, I waited two more for this, for the workforce to come back out and the vain idea that maybe she’d be among them.
There was a moment when maybe I caught a glimpse…but I’m not sure.
I sipped my mimosa and silently toasted to the woman I thought I might have seen and toasted to the reset button that is a new week and the six days of illusion where I actually believe it all won’t happen again.
As the song says, “Every day, every day, every day’s the same this way.” Too bad they don’t have the Housemartins in the jukebox.
I kept watching the space I thought she disappeared into after that fateful non-encounter, expecting the bodies to part, and to reveal that they were hiding her all along, but alas…I took a second mimosa instead.
Monday mornings are probably my favorite mornings for breakfast. The taste of the food, it’s the taste of something conquered, a sign that I’ve made it.
Even though I don’t have a regular schedule, Sunday nights are pretty rough. It’s not the return to the workday grind, the end of freedom, though when I used to do the 9 to 5, 7 days a week thing, I definitely understood that. Yet, it was also the same back then.
Sunday nights are the longest nights. The darkest nights. The nights when the soul is restless and the heart weary. It’s the culmination of all the things that didn’t happen that weekend, the calls unreturned, the drink-ups you missed, the time spent alone when you suspect you’re the only one. It all hits on Sunday, the feeling that Friday night was wasted and Saturday just passed aimlessly, and that morning when other people were having brunch with either friends they had been wanting to see or with the person they woke up next to that morning, new acquaintance or old, the knowledge that I sat there and ate a child’s breakfast, something I told myself was rock ‘n’ roll like Elvis, but that really only a dumb kid orders and tells himself is okay--that knowledge has the sting of a thousand wasps. And so Sunday night, when a burp comes and it tastes like peanut butter even though I’ve brushed my teeth twice, it’s just clear that the yellow stains of shame are something that will never be polished off.
I watched the window today, expecting maybe I’d see that sight again, see the woman I saw on Friday. Like I waited two days for potato pancakes, I waited two more for this, for the workforce to come back out and the vain idea that maybe she’d be among them.
There was a moment when maybe I caught a glimpse…but I’m not sure.
I sipped my mimosa and silently toasted to the woman I thought I might have seen and toasted to the reset button that is a new week and the six days of illusion where I actually believe it all won’t happen again.
As the song says, “Every day, every day, every day’s the same this way.” Too bad they don’t have the Housemartins in the jukebox.
I kept watching the space I thought she disappeared into after that fateful non-encounter, expecting the bodies to part, and to reveal that they were hiding her all along, but alas…I took a second mimosa instead.