tiny mushrooms

loss is a universal feeling, after all.

[ SEVEN. ]

i was invited by my friends to a coffee shop to work on our english poetry project together—by that i mean they want me to write their stanzas for them.

i've always had a knack for poetry, or so everyone would tell me all the time. something about vivid imagery or just a lot to say, apparently that's what the talk is when it comes to what utter shit i think i write.

but hey, if it's enough to impress people, i'll just take it as it comes.

it was a cold yet sunny friday and all of us were running onto the bus as fast as we could possibly go; even our jackets couldn't serve enough protection against the wind.

one by one, we were in the queue waiting to swipe our bus cards to get inside, and the four of us chose to sit in the back of the bus where the heating system was working the best.

"finally," jisung said in relief, "i'm not close to getting frostbite on my fucking toes!"

"your toes?!" minjung laughed in disbelief.

"yes, my toes," he fidgetted his leg, "this boy has cold feet almost ninety-percent of the time!"

"that explains so much of your personality!" hanyu joked.

i clicked my tongue and shook my head while listening the conversation. our conversations were always the same—jisung says something questionable, one of us girls react in judgement, jisung responds and hanyu makes some witty remark—and i still get a kick out of how creative our strange conversations could get over the course of however much time the universe gives us. they're the greatest friends anyone could ask for.

"which stop do we get off at?" i asked out of the blue, lifting my head from off the vibrating window.

"the one that intersects 127th street and valentine avenue," hanyu looked at the map on his phone, "man, it's so weird taking this bus because i don't know the route."

"did you just look up a nearby coffee place?" i assumed.

"basically, and i asked aaron from third period global class for directions."

"do you really think aaron has enough of a brain capacity to tell you where 127th street is?"

"if there's a coffee shop there, then yes," hanyu stated like it was a fact, "aaron basically fried his braincells by drinking too much caffeine—that shit's all he knows."

"you make it sound like he told you where to get the best cocaine from," minjung gasped, "he's not a druggie!"

___

we finally ended up at the coffee shop and took the first empty table we saw.

jesus christ, i looked around the "small" coffee shop, this place is hella crowded for a small business.

i sat across from minjung and jisung, with hanyu who was about to buy our coffee for us. each of us handed two dollars to him and he counted them to be eight dollars before walking away.

as he went to get the orders—four small mocha frappes—i took out my journal full of poems and the other two took out their english notebooks.

"so this poem has to be at least 20 lines," minjung bit her pencil eraser, "and it has to have a consistent rhyme scheme for extra credit."

"i don't know how to do that," i whined, "i'm a terrible rhymer!"

"at least you're not a terrible poet," jisung commented, "you could make it work."