a girl like you

I’m sitting in my car at the base of a mountain, reading Chinese poetry, listening to Sly and the Family Stone.

Yesterday in Starbucks I told the barista Morgan that when I arrived in San Luis Obispo my heart was entirely broken, and I came to his coffee shop every day and it put its arms around me, and saved me.

Saved me for this Monday afternoon, cloud-grayed sky, dancing alone at my mountain bench. But not slow dancing.

It’s said, “Flowers bloom on a withered tree,” and that’s exactly how I am, who I am, when I make the life of baristas brighter. When I act all goofy and child-like around little kids at the Y. When I call someone out of the blue in Queens, New York, who says he told his wife that very morning he was going to call me. When I sit on the cushion, and thrill to 4am coffee, read books I don’t want to understand, and generally feel the grace of each and every dawn.

I said to my landlord/housemate today that it felt quite okay to give up my two Saturdays a month at the Y – which I requested earlier – because I don’t spend money on anything other than peanut butter and books. It makes me really happy to be able to say things just like that. Even if I left out coffee.