Sundays

Instead of packing my children into the backseat of a soft metallic sedan & driving around the block to rock them to sleep & dream suburban dreams, I will take them to the Laundromat to be lulled by the lather, the tumbling, & the cyclicality.

I give my clothes a second chance just so I can linger a little longer in the calm necessity of the buzzing people, a little bit grubby as they bend, fold, sort, wait; everything will come out in the wash.

Never let me do the groceries on an empty stomach: I fall in love with strangers based on the contents of their shopping baskets, & end up with a fridge filled only with* coriander, marmalade, & hazelnut chocolate.

*On that garishly sunny Monday morning, she woke up to a refridgerator filled with little more than the wilting greenness of dandelions on a late-july afternoon, spoiled cat naps, & the soiled lid of a jam jar: nothing comes from nothing, a pessimist would say.

She pulled herself from the damp sheets, damp with the dew of dreams, & gave her feet to the streets. Wandering from one café to the next, she finally found the one that she was confident had the largest pool of sunlight by the windows. Resting there, she nursed a café crème for I-don’t-know-how-long, curled up like a kitten in the warm window light, & nibbled delicately on a pain au chocolat** until the sun slipped behind the Palais du Luxembourg.

**It was her very first. She decided immediately that she much prefers them to croissants for their density. The chocolate arteries run through its underbelly & melt, sliding down her tongue. Tissue paper flakes stick to her lips & her fingertips retain a sheen of butter that she does not lick off, but rather lets become an impermanent contribution to her fingerprints. For the rest of the morning, everything she touches – the coffee cup, her day-planner, the sugar spoon, change for the bus – will have a luster that lingers with her own irrefutable mark of identity.