Flash 10

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Flash 10: Autobiographical

333 words

Time Passing

He’s sitting at the table across the café, writing in a journal, or drawing, and nursing a cup of something – probably coffee.
Black coffee.
It would have to be.
Black coffee, to match the long black coat, the black jeans, ripped at the knees, the black boots that buckle and clip all the way up his calves, the black shirt that I can’t see, but am sure that he’s wearing. The blue-black hair, tipped with purple, that stands out in short spikes all over his head.
An exotic crow, come here to roost for a reason known only to him.
I take a bite of my cake, a sip of my tea, and try to go back to my book.
But I can’t stop looking at him.
I wonder how old he is.
No more than twenty, if I’m any judge, and probably much, much younger.
I smile into my tea cup, amused at myself – surreptitiously eyeing a pretty, pretty boy, as if I were seventeen, hoping that he’d smile at me.
But what would he see if he looked up from his notebook and turned his head my way? A woman, almost thirty, in coordinating separates. A knee length skirt and a black cardigan, a necklace that pretends it’s made of garnets but is really made of glass.
I wonder, would he take a second look – register the buckled point of my shoe or the deep berry colour of my fingernails – and see me for what I am inside?
He sips his coffee, focused on the notebook before him.
I finish my cake, drain the dregs of my tea and close my book.
I take my dishes to the counter, just for the excuse to walk by him.
What am I thinking?
I pass by him again as I walk out the door, forcing myself not to look back as I go.
But, through the window, I see him again, still bent over his notebook.
He never even knew I was there.