Staring around the coffee shop today, I found myself asking questions, inwardly, about everyone's life - what had brought every one of these people here, across lives wide as the sky or brief as a breath? Every seat was filled: babies burping against their mother's backs, or bawling at some discomfort; children reading on couches or exploring the underbellies of tables; teenagers rescued from the tedium of school, excitedly discussing sports, boys, and Christmas break; college students discussing existentialism on the couches, and the boundaries of love and loving one-self; other college students silently absorbed in nursing or psychology; parents and graduates meeting for tea, or bringing their kids into a new environ for adult adoration, and a caffeine-accompanied breather; middle-aged business meetings and work breaks; seniors reading the paper and sipping at black coffee or holding hands, as though youth was found again; and an old pop song tells of age and growing old, wrinkled, tired as a december setting sun.
Who are they all, and why is dissonance defining such distance between their souls and mine, when I just want to touch their lives? May I, please, just one time? But even in the chair next to me, they live in a different eternity, and the Christmas tree tells of gifts given like this. It displays, with glittering ornaments and a star guiding those with open eyes to see, though I'm no wise man, the way.
It's a hive of drones, each one droning on with scarce a moment for passing love, few with smiles even to light the day. Thought and memory always assault me so poignantly on wodensday, like carrion birds swooping in to carry my ramblings away.
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