P'tach Lanu Sha'ar

I'm becoming friends with the latte boy. Every morning, at half past eight, I find my way to the curved counter on 86th and Broadway. The air is brisk and the door is heavy and as I force it open I find solace in the soft breeze of recognition. "Here she comes", they murmur. "Venti sugar-free caramel latte with regular milk?" The question lingers rhetorically and I smile. It was about a week ago that I started calling him "latte boy" and he started calling me "sugar-free but sweet", and I can't help but blush when he winks at me and flashes a grin.

I know it's innocent. I know it's innocent because he works the morning shift.

I wonder what we'd talk about if I didn't rush off to work. I wonder if he'd tell me about his love for pixie sticks, or about the day he decided to adopt an iguana, or about the store where he bought his purple shoelaces. I wonder if I'd tell him about the way Woody Allen narrates things in the back of my head, or about the way insecurity feels, or about the plant I want to buy in the flower shop across the street. Or maybe we wouldn't talk at all. Maybe we'd just look at each other and smile and then go for a walk in the park to watch the kites fly by. We'd hold hands and exchange whispers, but only while the sun was out, because he'd know that I'm scared of holding hands at nighttime. He'd know I've put the walls back up and he'd let me keep them there, for my sake - for when he lets me down. And he would talk and I would listen and that would be enough.

But I do rush off to work in the morning, so I think I'll leave things at "sugar-free and sweet" and "latte boy".


Where did it go? Where is the atheism, the rational self - the cynical but safe? What is this holiday hypnosis, this upside-down, this exuberant nausea, this raging belief that contradicts personal experience...? I stood before a multitude of mourners and their silence taught me how to mourn aloud. I dove into an ocean of repentance and in the deep sincerity found air. I shook beneath the spinning and the sound and felt centered while outside myself.

I want to change the world. I'm young enough to think I can. Let me.