1. On the streets, on your way home from your 9-5 job, with the coworkers that you hate, and the wage that just barely covers rent, covers the space it takes up to exist, with your lipstick half faded and your hand still clutching the Starbucks coffee cup you got 8 hours ago, listen to the 2 old men with beards who call you babe and smell like cigarette smoke and want, talk about the Landy's, the coffee shop just a block away from your old apartment on 74th street, closing down.
2. Sit on the front stoop of your run down apartment building, that costs less than a 1-star hotel, but still manages to exceed that level of dumpiness, still holding your empty Starbucks cup, and wonder why you never went to Landy's. It was right there all this time, and now it's closed.
3. Stop and smell the yellow flowers growing in a little hanging pot next to the door of your building on your way inside.
4. Grab your Starbucks in the morning, put on your makeup, (put your lipstick on after you've drank your coffee) don't call a taxi, instead walk to work. Feel the warmth of your full coffee cup against your cold fingers.
5. Sit at your desk for 8 hours. Try not to get annoyed at the click click clicking of Kathy's fingers against her keyboard. Stare at your Starbucks cup, ignore Kathy's click click clicking. Try to remember the first time you cooked a meal yourself and wore the pride of it stamped across your forehead so big even Kathy stopped her click click clicking to notice it.
6. Pass Landy's on your way home. Pause on the street to get a good look at it, smell the stale coffee and the rotting lumber of the trashy little tables. Picture yourself sitting at one of the little tables drinking their stale coffee or bringing the coffee back to the office, so everyone would notice and even Kathy would stop her click click clicking to notice it. (They would all be shocked at the gesture, even if the coffee was stale and cold.) Wish you went to Landy's at least once. (Don't stand there too long, you wouldn't want those men with beards who call you babe and smell like cigarette smoke and want to find you, with your half faded lipstick and empty Starbucks cup, all alone.)
7. Hang another little hanging pot up next to the other little hanging pot with the yellow flowers next to your apartment door. Grow red flowers in other little hanging pot, even if they die. (Life is too short for regrets)
