Morning After

I wrote this on Facebook after a particularly rough night earlier this semester. There’s really not much more to it.

-

it is eight twenty-four on a sunday morning. i am sitting in a café on the streetcorner opposite the music school. the sun is just rising and breathing life into the now dreary, dirty snow. it is ironically beautiful. the cute barista is leaning on the counter reading a newspaper; there is one other person here: a chinese grad student doing some reading for a class that i hope i will never have to take.
a man pulls up in a cobalt bmw roadster. he is alone, in his late forties, with a prominent bald spot and an inkling of a mid-life crisis. he walks into the small kiosk in the parking lot housing an atm, leaving his door open and the engine running.
i want to steal his car. right now.
i want to speed off (careful! the roads are icy) down third street and drive as far and fast as i possibly can. i want to cross state lines-oh, god, the prospect of being labeled a runaway, a fugitive, a criminal, it fills me with something akin to lust. i want to drive north and see what’s so great about those lakes, maybe make a detour into canada, head east to new york, vermont, maine, see the atlantic, decide for myself which coast is better. i want to drive to minnesota–do they really talk like that?–, to wyoming, colorado to see the grand canyon, i might be able to make it all the way to california. maybe i could even–
mid-life crisis gets back into the car. drives off. he’s headed due north, if you’re curious. my reverie has been broken, but for a fleeting moment, i have…accomplished nothing.
my life is but an enormous rhetorical question. i may have an answer, but i’m not meant to say it. i think, and think, and think, and then-alas, too late–a steadily receding hairline speeds away. due north.
it is eight thiry-two on a sunday morning. a man in a ski cap and a pumpkin curry jacket is walking his akita puppy along the sidewalk. my coffee is dead. i’m thinking i’ll go and think about flirting with the barista now.
-

~ by posaune on 04 February 09.