Nutmeg In The Air

It all starts with a beginning

A/N: this is a story someone wanted me to write, and was lowkey nagging me about it. If someone wants to give me title suggestions, then yeah. Go ahead. I'm not creative. 

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The coffee shop smelled of coffee grounds and nutmeg, soft in colour and very quiet. It was a place I felt safe. Like home.  The soft light illuminated the tables and books lining the walls. It was almost cold, almost, like a house of a friend, or a family member that runs just slightly warmer than you do. The people inhabiting the shop were like me, loose, and forgiving, constantly with their nose in a book, and not caring about much except how the story would end. 

The ending are the saddest part. The ending of a perfect book, of a movie, of a plot, that seems like it would never end, that would carry on to infinity, like intimacy, always there, and always exactly what you need. The reliability of love, and compassion, and hope, and all else that people like me thrive on. 

Beginnings. 

I sat in one of the back chairs. One that enveloped me in it's warmth and hospitality. The softness of worn leather, flowed around my legs and back, comforting me, and calming me. The soothing sound of concerto no. 5, by Johann Sebastian Bach soothed my aching head, while the warm coffee, and reliable plot of my current book anchored me to my surroundings. I belonged there. My guard was nowhere to be seen and I loved it that way, the strange company of the private school girl, and the man, tired from a day's work, and the woman with piercings and tattoos, and the college grad currently working on their PhD, and the other girl, engrossed in her book, not caring about her coffee, and biting her fingernail in anticipation of the next occurrence in her book. 

This is what I needed so desperately. Coffee, company, and the promise of a new beginning. 

I thrived in the world of knowledge and understanding. Of plot events and coffee, of love, and predictability. Of intimacy, and power to choose how a story affects me. The way I can choose how to live, how to inspire, how to thrive in a world in which the only thing people have told me is no. The choice I have over stories. Of the life of a young woman, of a young man, of the characters I grow to love every time I am reintroduced. Every time I open the pages to a book, all I can think about is the power I have over these characters lives, and how they impact me. Of how I impact the world, of how the world impacts me, of how, at every turn I am told no, just because I love women, and I am a woman, and I am from a white society that seems to only encourage judgement, and no. 

I do not believe in no. I believe in yes. I believe in second chances, in new beginnings, in restarts, and new paths, and differences, in impacting the world you live in, because that's the only world you will ever have, everyone deserves to change the world, to impact your society, to live. To flourish. I deserve that. The grad deserves that, the pierced woman deserves that, the man who works too much deserves that, the private school girl deserves that, the college grad deserves that,  the woman sitting across from me deserves that because we are all humans. We all deserve to be enveloped by a story, and change the meaning of it, by proving we are worth it. We are worth pain, and heartbreak, and endings. But we are also worth love, and accomplishment, and thriving, and power to choose, and power to be who we want, and power to love who we want. And beginnings. We are worth a start, an intro, a way to tell the world who we are, because no one else is us. We own our own hearts. No one else has the right to say no, when we want to say yes. 

This is our world, the bridges, and the towers, and the schools, and the rivers, and the homes, and the coffee stores that smell like coffee grounds and nutmeg. We own the hills, and the fountains, and all the grass that we tread upon, because this is our world, and we have the power to do what we damn well please, because we are human. We are human, and we deserve to change our world. No one has the right to say no. But we have the responsibility to say yes. To take out lives by the throat, and command it's loyalty. Because our loyalty is to our heart, and other's hearts, and whoever we meet on the street, and the pierced woman, and the overworked man, and the college grad, and the woman, who sits across from you. Everyone has the responsibility to our world to change it. 

I looked up and realised the woman across from me was staring, like she knew I had discovered something inside myself. Something I had not known previously because I hadn't been in the right place, the right community. We stared at each other knowingly, and with trusting eyes. I hadn't read any of my book. My coffee had gone cold. But I trusted her, so I went to the counter, asked them to warm it up for me, and sat with the woman and discussed my revelation. We stayed for hours, talking, and drinking, and laughing. When there were no occupants left, no people besides me and the woman I had fallen for, we left. But promised each other this was not an ending, merely a beginning, because endings are sad and never are what we want. 

And the coffee shop smelled of coffee grounds and nutmeg, soft in colour and very quiet. It was a place I felt safe. Like home.  Like her.