tea time and other fun distractions

In a booth by myself. The papaya milk tea is overloaded with ice, diluting what should have been. The booths around me were full when I checked into the teahouse at eleven. Now, the booths adjacent to mine are vacant. With night eyes and dim lights and me not wearing my glasses, all the girls appear stand-out pretty, and yes, a many of them do pass by, and I’m sure at least one of them has thought how attractive this writer is who scribbles in very fine and upright strokes. But from where she walks, she cannot possibly see his writing. It’s only by judging from his pensive expression and the intensity with which he grips his pen that she might assume he is writing in very fine strokes. Or to her, the fines strokes mean nothing when his contemplative presence has already captivated a corner of her mind. Maybe she only passes by and surely that is the case. And many of them put an extra bite to their catwalk, just in case the writer happens to look up. What they don’t see is that the writer is devoted to his craft.

He is thinking about a certain girl he was with twelve years ago this day. The girl had a liking toward turquoise sweaters. In the records he kept from back then, he had described her as fragile and mysterious. That was his sixteenth summer.

While he was driving downtown he revisited a song that the girl used to like. It was playing on his cassette player, but that was also when the traffic jam started on what was supposed to be the highway, and he had to hit stop, and calm, and arrive at a kind of statement that would allow for relief in the reality of heavy trucks, speed limits, and exit ramps. At the same time, he is thankful for this catalogue of feelings and the ease by which he can relive these feelings whenever he wants.

drafted on Thursday night, July 24th, at Destiny Teahouse