Stirrings Pt. III: Bedside Prayers and Waiting Room Coffee

The phone rings on occasion.  Everyone will stop to look towards the volunteer at the desk.  She calls a name and most everyone goes back to what they were doing.  People drink coffee; they sip at it softly, with wandering eyes.  It’s relatively quiet and everyone is waiting.  People fidget and watch the TV.  People answer phones, speaking softly into ears listening. Miles away.  They drink their coffee again. Drink. Fill.  Repeat.  Like any other situation we fall into patterns.

I have a cup that sits, still steaming, next to my stack of papers. It’s not worth drinking.  What you might expect is a hot cup of coffee, comforting aromas, rich warm taste and all.  What you might get is an oily concoction of burnt out sludge, and it’s not a bad thing.  You can’t expect this to be an experience.  It just is.  You are waiting.  Not for anything in particular.  You are waiting for a moment in time.  You get the call and the waiting ends.  It’s pretty simple really.  The people surrounding you are doing the same. 

They wait.  They are called to the phone.  They leave…or they continue to wait.

It’s not about whether good things happen to bad people. 

It’s not about whether bad things happen to good people.

We are all here.

We are all people.

The fact is things happen to people.

Things just happen to people.

Stirrings Pt II: Coffee Shop

I’ve spent at least three nights a week here for two months now; I should know the names of some of these people.  I should know she will distract me for, at the very least, a moment or two of my time here.  I should know that in my mind we have been slow dancing, tiptoeing around a topic, a possibility, a question, and an answer, waiting for a strong wind that might sway either of us towards vulnerability.  I should know that it probably isn’t healthy for me to come here anymore.  Indecision and possibility are like a cocktail with a bad aftertaste and I find myself hooked, desperately and hopelessly hooked...

The thing of it is she still asks if I want room for cream.  The words have a searching quality about them.  They ring hopefully from her lips, like white smoke and bells above locked doors, but I’m not listening.

She still asks, and I still say no thank you.  The words hang themselves from my lips, and I take my coffee black, filled with nostalgia.

Stirrings

When you sit down and try to calculate the form and function of a memory it's likely that you are going to come up with something undefined.

It is likely that you are going to be viewing a form stirred up in the decaying plant and mud life of a long lost lake.

See, there are broken moments when you feel lost in the night. It's cold and dark and street lights exist as distant fireflies buzzing in and out of your consciousness.

Sometimes you wake up to a dying fire and you wonder where the night has gone. The sun casts its lot among the dust and the dirt on the floor and something cold stirs inside you. It's like the wind whipping through trees.