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unwind with - Piya Aaye Na By KK, Tulsi Kumar
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Three Years.
“Trimisù cake pastry and a bouquet of fresh lilies.”
I lifted my eyes slowly just long enough for his to meet mine then lowered them again to the neat rows of pastries behind the glass. My knife cut through the layered sponge with quiet precision, the blade gliding without resistance, each layer of mascarpone yielding as though it understood this moment belonged to discipline. A porcelain plate received the slice, the dust of cocoa falling lightly onto its white surface, like dusk spilling across snow. I turned to the lilies, trimmed their stems with a single decisive snap and tied them in pale ribbon. Nothing elaborate. Nothing wasted. I placed them before him and his lips curved into a polite smile perhaps waiting for mine to mirror his. It did not.
“Anything else?”
My tone was soft, even yet distant as though it had traveled across glass before reaching him. He shook his head, murmured thanks but I had already moved on.
That was how mornings usually began. Orders delivered in hurried words, answered with movements that carried no excess. The city was always in a rush, its pulse throbbing with urgency and my cafe had learned to breathe within it, to hold its rhythm without surrendering. I spoke little now. I had discovered that sweetness could live in what my hands created, not in what my mouth offered. The cakes bore their own tenderness, the flowers gave their fragrance without instruction and the books waited on shelves like loyal companions. What was left for me to add except exactness?
The walls of Ruh é Dolce wore sage-green, their skin softened by cascades of ivy that clung like memories refusing to loosen. Above, glass rafters caught the sunlight and broke it into softer fragments, while strings of warm bulbs hung like constellations caught in a net. Wooden doors, heavy yet welcoming, framed the entrance, their polished grain whispering of permanence. Inside, the tables stood sturdy in oak, each softened by vases of blooms, hydrangeas, roses, peonies flowers that seemed to listen quietly to the words spoken around them. Chairs with blush cushions curved like open arms though I knew well that mine remained folded close to me. This space was not simply built but it was breathed into life.
