MORNING COFFEE 30 - aladdin's walk

By Susan Weber

My tears could turn this crystal pond into the Dead Sea. Heaving my dripping limbs onto the pool deck, I shower, dress, and lace my boots to head home to my beloved. The sun sets on Cedar Road's zooming rush. By day the light stops traffic on a dime for high school kids in black tights, slouched jeans, and techno colored hair. My hair, crammed into the ski cap our son picked out, would spook an undertaker. I cross the street at Lee, the aggregated horsepower chomping on its bit.

Meanwhile Lee Road embraces Friday night. Movie goers scuttle under the marquee's quirky titles, films we'll forget we wanted to see. Cleveland Tough, says the sign above the trendy new brewery that once housed MacDonalds and then the Lemon Grass, where peanuts and ginger flavored the sauce. How tough can you be I wonder, watching a gray-haired picture of health shrug his jacket over a bar stool on the warm side of spotless plate glass. How tough are we before we meet leering Lucifer hot on the make? At a booth once occupied by toddlers buzzed on fries and their highly distractible moms, a woman's svelte hand cuts bar food with shiny silver cutlery. She does so young so well. I would tell her, capture the day and the night and the fleeting afternoon before your insouciance abandons you.

The scene swims in puddles at my feet. Images blur. A man angles a pizza to his hip, a small boy in the crook of his arm. In a Moroccan store front, the genie lamp sways above a window seat. A stroller wedged between mismatched chairs, girlfriend laughter billowing. The gyro joint doling out falafel and chips. Zoma's Ethiopia in full swing. The yoga school, preteens shouting from the library steps, my crazed shouting under the bridge, theater staged five minutes from our porch. I am running now to the one who waits. For me. To bring back the world we love.

Photo by Arne Hückelheim CC BY-SA 1.0