Only onions and kids

One of the most beautiful things I've read in a long time.

Almost every night when everyone is asleep, I'll rearrange my son's train tracks. We have wooden tracks, the kind I wish I had when I was a kid. (The secret to buying kids trains is to not worry so much about the trains themselves, but get a good variety of tracks). I sit on the floor in the semi-darkness and try to come up with an interesting design because I know in a few hours my son will wander in dragging me by the hand and the first thing he'll do is study the new tracks before sitting down and playing trains for a while. He's never asked why the tracks are always different, it's just how things are in his world. It's little my way of telling the kid I love him. Sometimes, like this morning, I'll fall asleep on the couch while he's there playing and when I wake up I'll be covered in carefully placed cars and trains covering me from head to toe. I figure that's his way of saying he loves me back.

Thank-you, Raul.

A miss without a swing

I’m sitting directly opposite her, line of sight; the café is almost empty. She’s reading Wallpaper, in front of her sits a book about slow cooking. Two for two. I look up, she’s looking at me, our eyes lock for a second. I thought it was an engaging stare on my behalf, her face, though, said stalker. Still, she persisted, a couple more glances snuck here and there, an operation I too was carrying out from my side of the table.

But the café is closing. It’s time to go. I stand, I wait for an in – there are none. My only attempt to speak to her foiled by another damned patron who stood between us. And alas, it was over. Again. Yes, Her.

Walking away, looking through the window, our eyes meet again. The dance of hopelessness, headed absolutely nowhere. Proof of my distinct lack of ability to make these circumstances work confirmed without any doubt.

In ten pieces, please.

My second coffee had already arrived when she sat down beside me at the bar. I had already sensed her presence. She was alone, she was close and my peripheral vision told of great beauty.

I could feel her looking at me, at the book I was reading, as I too was glancing across from the very corner of my eye to see what she was reading. I sat there trying to concentrate as to how I could interject, speak to her, but nothing came.

Her coffee came and I now I could hear her. Her voice smiled along with her lips as she thanked John. A beautiful smile. She looked again as she had her opportunity to do so.

I continued to read, she pushed her book aside—a classic by the brief glimpse I had at the cover—and began to write in her worn Moleskine. She turned the book upside down – was she afraid I might see what it was? It did not matter to me by this stage – she was reading, she was beautiful, she was next to me and I was intoxicated by her.

As she wrote her body was turned towards me, making the writing impossible to read. Not that I would want to have entered her world uninvited anyway. I wanted to be asked there and I willed her to do so.

Her soup came and she ate. Her slender wrists broke bread and she ate her soup, elegantly but hungrily. The chilli that I too had enjoyed in the soup but half an hour before made her nose run. She blew her nose confidently. She looked again.

Through this I sat impassive. She did not know I had been sensing every move. That I had stopped reading long ago and was instead sitting still in the face of nervous energy, practically begging my mind for a solution to enter into conversation. To know her, to understand who this smiling, beautiful woman was.

I finished my book. I left. I returned home to realise that I had not paid for my lunch. On the way home I had lamented my inaction, and now I had to return. This was fate. This was it.

I returned to the busy bakery. She was there, on her phone. Gone to me. I paid. I left. I was defeated.

“What are you reading?”
“Tolstoy.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“Yeah, I thought it was time I read some of his work. What are you reading?”
“Flights of Love.”
“Good?”
“Brilliant. I would recommend it. Journal or writing the next great Australian novel?”
“Journal. I was writing about the weather, how I was enjoying the new season. Do you write?”
“I do. Although, I’m not as good at bringing my Moleskine along as you are.”
“I forget, too.”
“I’m W.”
“I’m-

Easier than breathing.