Sunday

3

As it's Tuesday, my part-time job requests my time for a few hours after class-which today, I only have until 12 rather than 5. Conveniently, as my workplace is relatively halfway between my home and my school, I walk the approximate half-mile distance to each destination, every day.

I'm a barista at a small-town, home-sickeningly sweet coffee shop called Omlatte; it's the local go-to for some artisan jolt of energy, or your average breakfast sandwiches, or even your favorite lunch staples. And though my shift is from 12 to 4, I am a closer, as this is merely a breakfast place.

My favorite thing about walking to work here after classes is the change of atmosphere and overall flavor of the environment. School, in and of itself, is so still. Students are, more or less, restricted to some oppressive, climate-controlled, imagination stifling place, all for what? For the sake of learning? For the sake of discipline?

I'm willing to bet that this isn't limited to only me. School is fantastic in theory, but evidently in practice, there is absolutely no way within this current system, to effectively reach out and teach and nurture each and every varying sort of student's mind, with merely a lesson, or a sheet, or some standardized test; which feels to some more like a punishment than an evaluation of what they theoretically learned in some parallel, subjective, corrupt learning system.

And walking away from that sort of place is nothing short from liberating each and every day.

There's just something transformational about opening the blank doors to your own prison and walking out meeting your muse in the nature and breeze and openness of it all. Once I'm out, I don't look back to the grey, stoic building. I just walk, so happily, towards whatever destination should bring me joy next.

Omlatte is a petite building that brands its own name in some aesthetically pleasing brush-script fashion. The mood there is most always warm and inviting. Upon arriving, I always tie my longish hair up into a bun, and dress myself in the cherry-red aprons that push the cheery mood defined by the place, and the smell of coffees and teas, cinnamon and chocolate, eggs and breads.

The environment here is drastically different from that of school. School is still and stagnant. The coffee shop is vibrant and vivid and verdant with voices and laughter, music and movement, energy and empathy and entity.

At school, I can be the "nondescript-introvert-with-the-notebooks" version of myself, but here at work, I can be grinning and peachy-aura'd to my heart's content.

Work is slow. I spend the majority of the shift leaning against a back counter, book in hand, while sipping a sweetened mug of Irish Breakfast. My mind drifts by Emery, but I quickly brush the thought of him away. It's unlikely today, that I'll see him and his messy espresso mane, and his warm honey brown eyes, and his protective demeanor.

I wish, right now, more than ever, that my subconscious had the sense not to start to fall for a stranger so quickly and freely. No matter how daydream-worthy the stranger is.

But no matter, I think, maybe he's worth the daydream.

~

"I'm sorry about yesterday," Emery runs his fingers through his hair, "I won't try and look at your stuff anymore."

I shrug. "It's okay. I'm sorry I was so.. slappy."

He chuckles and slips a strawberry in his mouth. We're sitting on the park bench where we met a few days prior, talking and snacking on fruit. I decided to walk by the park after work, and while I told myself that I wasn't seeking him, I think "myself" knew it was a lie.

It's that time of day between afternoon and evening for which someone's yet to assign a name. This is one of my favourite times of day because of the sun's sort of indecision in the sky; it's the time of apprehension and an impending sunset, though it's almost as if the sun and everything both living and nonliving, questions just what the sun intends to do next.