Coffee Shop Rituals
There is a comfort in the dust of my old writing archives that appeals most to me here, late at night, when it’s quiet and my brain is still. I take a measure of pleasure at reading things written five years ago, ten, twenty. There are pages and pages of things: fictions, journals, letters to friends. Some still exist in little holes on the Internet. Most don’t.
Lifetimes ago, Viola and I would sit in one particular coffee shop in our college town, and we would write for one another. She preferred writing poetry, I enjoyed writing short stories. We would sip our coffees and pick at our muffins, and when we’d both finished putting our words down, we would slide our pages to one another and read in silence.
Today, I have filled a banker’s box with printed pages—stories, letters, journals—and I put Viola’s address in thick lines of black ink on it. I have been thinking much about the past these days as the world burns, and of what things from then I wish could be brought forth into the now. Tomorrow morning, I will have my coffee and eat my muffin, and then I will drive to the post office and put this box into the mail.
Some things from lifetimes ago we can let rest in quiet memory.
Some things we should brush free of dust and bring back into the light.
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