One Block Over

September eleventh. The shift ended at the exact moment where staying in the building felt physically impossible, so Simone said 'coffee' and I said 'yes' before she finished the word. That's the whole origin story.

The place is one block east, I don't know if I'd call it my regular, but I've been in there enough times to know which direction the milk is and which direction the line wraps when it gets bad. It wasn't bad. We ordered, leaned on the counter, waited. Simone found something philosophically unsatisfying about her cup lid and spent the first minute outside addressing that. I had apparently already started walking.

Waiting for the order and already workshopping something.

I've been thinking lately, and I'm not sure this is going anywhere yet, it might just be the September energy that always makes me feel like I should be oriented toward something, that there's something I want to do that I haven't identified yet. I noticed it again on the walk back. Simone was talking and I was listening and underneath that I was also somewhere else, which is not her fault and also not a problem, just a fact about where I am right now. The itch that hasn't named itself.

She found an issue with the lid. We were out there a while.

Anyway. The coffee was fine. The walk was actually exactly the right length. I got home before the light changed, and Gerald was doing his thing on the sill, and the apartment was quiet in the way it gets on early fall evenings, and that was that.