In a Coffee Shop on Irving Place
I sit down at a coffee shop, it’s February, the year of our lord 2023, after the plague after the wars and the pestilence, and the 53-degree winter days (the sun beating down on the nape of our necks like a heavy-weight boxing champion, jab left, hook right, the world is ending). I sit down at a coffee shop because I like the way the T looks in their logo — the curved, sharp serif beckoned me into its belly basement warmth. This thing’s been underwater at least once in its life — guaranteed. Coffees here are $6 minimum and it tastes bitter-burnt on my tongue. The barista had the tact to keep our exchange short- this is America after all and people are so friendly sometimes I find myself spilling my guts to a stranger at Walgreens, committing seppuku to the indiscretions of my youth as a middle-aged woman nods along as if to say yes, I remember this pain too.
It’s lonely here, here in this city, here in this calendar month, here as a 28-year-old on this planet earth in the time of social media and a pandemic that took away our breath and our ability to say hello to strangers. There isn’t even snow to leave footprints to say I’m here! I walked outside today! I exist!
There’s a world somewhere out there, that when I sit down on the uncomfortable wooden chairs of this little hole-in-the-wall-pretentious-unassuming-yet-expensive shop, where someone speaks to me. It’s cultural at this point — I’ve heard the stories of my friends (who’ve lied) about a meet cute and just knowing. There’s a laugh, a furtive glance, a slightly foreign accent slipped in somewhere that feels appropriate for this sort of cosmic event.
I’ve prepped myself for this (sometimes I feel like it is the only thing I am properly prepared for in my entire life). I cook, I love so tenderly, I give fantastic forehead kisses. The list of pros of my personality is rote at this point, and I am so sick of hearing the word catch as if I am fish waiting for a net as if I am a butterfly waiting for captivity because there’s a part of me that is, that wants to scream catch me! I’m here! I’m ready to be loved and to love in the way the world needs! Me! The one that got the cappuccino. They’ll pronounce my name wrong and I’ll have a witty comment prepared that would make that someone snort and maybe they’ll fall a little bit in love with me.
I haven’t had someone in love for me in forever, so long it feels almost like my first ever death, not the breakup or the heart-wrenching event that is the post-breakup-talking-stage no, this — perpetual loneliness sans a romantic partner, in perpetuity. I feel as if I’ve been wrongly sentenced to a life of singlehood, my punishment for being tooindependent, or wanting to live a life that doesn’t hit the story beats of the traditional model that makes me want to jump off a fucking cliff.
It’s not all dark. In this (current) actual reality I have learned how to feel better on my own. I’ve learned that feelings aren’t forever, that my lows are accompanied by highs I wouldn’t give up for the world. I’ve built friendships that feel so strong that a military siege couldn’t break them, and if the walls were ever to crumble I know, in the deepest corner of my soul, that I would find a way to cultivate a garden from the ruins.
Sometimes though, I allow myself to think of that reality. Of the smile I would wear. Of how it would feel like a river, like an open field, like a wooded path, where for once I didn’t have to do the fording or the cutting or the clearing on my own. For once maybe someone would reach out and say, come on, I’ve got you. Let’s go.
