Who Will Love You

Monday morning arrives bleak despite the sunshine, a hangover jumps barefoot on your temples, howling, and the coffee only serves to make a sloshing sound in your belly that throws you off balance. As your cells struggle to find the hidden serotonin reserves, and you know there was a lot of Very Important Stuff you were meant to do today, a quiet voice inside you whispers of  a mint green machine in the window, of how the sound of its keys tap, tap in a most comforting way and how the letters that tumble from its dances are unconditional, immune to outside pressure, how they are free. There's a jumble of points on your to do list, the hangover drags a savage anxiety across your chest, but the quiet voice continues, unabated, to tell you of the mint green machine in the window, and you smile despite yourself.

In the street outside, the air is changing, the sky is higher, little buds form quietly in the Greenstreets, and your blood knows it. I nod to the voice, spool a blank piece of paper around the cylinder, and let the tap, tap, tap of a typewriter remind me again who I am.