A thing for coffee shops

I have a thing for coffee shops, I really do. They function as my damsel-in-distress setting where a gallant young gentleman holding a tall pike place roast takes the chair across from mine and sweeps me off my stubborn feet.

Silly, maybe. But even if I’m not consciously playing this scenario in my head, it returns without fail. My reoccurring dream in the hours of the living. It’s almost as far fetched as my “When Harry Met Sally” complex. Both of which refuse to leave my caffeinated mind. This vivid fantasy does even more damage to my impossible hopes (yes, hopes) when the procrastination fairy comes and waves her magic wand over what little productivity I possess and I continue to sip, and to ponder. Symptoms include: a stomach with too much coffee and too little food, a blank word doc, an untouched novel (just to appear even more like a cliché), and eyes focused upward and to the right like I’m deep in thought over a philosophical theory, when in reality I’m narrating my ideal facial reaction to such an encounter with my intuitive knight in shining caffeine.

If there is even the slightest hint of melancholy or an overcast afternoon, my knight begins to gain facial features, maybe an eclectic music taste, a hint of scruff. Rain is a writer’s muse. Ask anyone who feels their words hold any amount of significance-they adore rain. Melancholy, nostalgia, longing, reminiscence, yearning, romance, ache, sorrow. These are words that arouse us. We who sit in coffee shops and wait for someone to find us among the sugary mochas, the abstract wall art, the wobbly wooden tables. We who continue to sip our coffee long after it looses its warmth. We who pack up our belongings slowly, just in case our knight decides to make an appearance. We who hear the thud of our paper cup once full of vain expectations into the trash as the day trembles on.
We who wait, wait no longer.

"But as for me, I will look to the Lord;

I will wait for the God of my salvation;

my God will hear me."

Micah 7:7