Familiar stranger

Since I don't have a job I get to sit in a coffee shop and listen to Patty Griffin as I edit and reedit my cover letter for potential employment opportunities. I watch you each day, wandering around the burnt colored couches and java-inhaling students on their laptops, looking for a place to sit yourself and your fanny pack. You never approach the register, yet you usually have a beverage.

I wonder, what goes on in that head of yours placed so neatly under that baseball cap with the John Deere insignia. We have shared a couch often, so I know you are a people watcher like myself, though you only talk to those who call you by name first. I do not know your name so you don't talk to me. You just sit and listen to music on a portable CD player- a throwback to times of old.

I like to think that you are listening to the ocean- sort of a battery operated sea shell, revealing to you the sounds of places afar- and then you close your eyes and you are in a child's drawing of the beach, walking in the yellow sand as the bright blue waves crash against the crayon blue shore. A little water splashes on your acid washed jeans, so you bend down to roll them up. I imagine you are very particular.

You point at the purple birds as they fly by and maybe you laugh so joyfully that some passersbys can't help but to stare. You look down and some turquoise and tangerine fish catch your eye as they slide from the water to the sand. As you grasp felt covered fish, rear your arm behind your head and release them into the waves you think, "This must be heaven."

You pick up a seashell placing it to your ear and you hear the sounds of an espresso machine, cash registers ringing, and people typing.