Poetry and Writes

People-Watching (WRITE)

*A write for 23 minutes. Begin with "_____ was people-watching again."*

Amanda was people-watching again. Chocolate hung fresh in her mouth, congealing with saliva. The marbled wood her coffee cup rested upon was graffitid here and there, rent with cuts and green crayon marks--most likely made my an impatient child who tugged on his mother's sleeve, emitting noises one'd hear from the least-visited enclosure in a zoo.

Amanda took a sip of her coffee. Caramel and candy cane, overrich. It was December 28th now, one of the dreariest days of the month. Honeybear Cafe must have been trying to keep the rainy Christmas spirit alive, until all the hippest costumers tore themselves away on New Year's Eve, to go get drunk on clean white-fringe carpets and elk antlers strung with fairy lights, getting dizzier and dizzier until at last that precious carpet was the farthest it had been from white since the previous New Year's.

So the cafe was packed with beanies and flannel to the brim that day, as Amanda peered over her triple-tall at the congregations all around her. It was a Thursday and she'd fled from her cluttered house to come here.

Her little house, plain brown, size of a rich man's cellar where he kept his secret array of closet spices--was nestled between two brick houses so tall they tore the clouds. She'd lived there in that house since she'd divorced and moved there for a time of brief and quiet contemplation. Little did she know she'd settle into the silence so readily and live there the rest of her life, just watching out the windows during breaks from rereading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. The rest of the time, she made jewelry for women who demonstrated spinning wool at farm tour vendors, hosted by the oldest and whitest county in the Pacific Northwest--and sold that jewelry on Ebay. And on the weekends Amanda snuggled up with her rat terrier on the couch to play BitLife.

Today had been calm enough, despite Amanda's sudden urge to get up and sit at a cafe, at a table that rested in the middle of quintessential Tacomans. She was never around  people, she just liked to observe them. Just now she was gathering inspiration for her newest novel idea--a contemporary one, different, off-beat, slow-paced, with a love story between two gray-haired women who adored cacti. It was like one of those popular teen books now, a coming-of-age, but for women in their golden years.

Amanda pulled a black pen from her purse, ready to assess her surroundings--in even further detail than she had been already.

On a brown notepad decorated with cornucopias and the words give thanks, she wrote:

o   woman, short bleached blonde hair, dog (lab/German shepherd?) on orange leash, leash tangled in chair legs

o   man, beard, 80s glasses, striped beanie, probably smokes weed on weekends with pals from college he only kind of cares about, maybe substitutes as elementary music teacher and teaches kids about  The Velvet Underground and  Flaming Lips

o   man, ugly flannel, Sounders cap, writing in battered green notebook across the table from little girl (wearing puffy gray coat, red face, writing as well with pen identical to mine, probably the man's daughter, getting out of the house to leave overwhelmed mother in peace)

Amanda smiled. She had a lot to work with.

NOTE: This write was not meant to be offensive or stereotyping in any way--it's simply the thoughts of a cynical woman observing the people around her in excruciating detail.

--KingfisherBirdLady