One dismal and grey day, I was walking down the abused and crackled sidewalk that city workers had neglected to fix despite the poor look of it. I glanced down every few steps to avoid the cracks in the cement that could make me stumble. It started to lightly rain, so I decided to find a place to wait out the weather. To my luck a run down café called The Bismark was right across the road. I sped across the street and approached the entrance to the café. I turned the old door **** and walked into a quaint and aesthetically pleasing, mostly white little room with several large machines that I can only assume would be used for make expensive, overly complicated coffee that was delicious.
A cute girl was standing behind the counter dressed in modern and intentionally tattered clothing that was obviously a planned statement to her quirky individuality. I ordered a small dark roast coffee and sat down by the window. While peering out the window into the seemingly boring and newspaper print world that lay before me, I saw someone walk in. It was a younger man, probably six months passed twenty and plain as the weather he just came in from. He wasn’t just any sort of plain; he was the kind of plain that stood out because he was so extraordinarily ordinary. He was wearing a red apron with a nametag that, only after a glance I could make out to read A&P.;
He walked up to the counter and ordered what I thought to be a black coffee. He paid and then waded past the field of wooden chairs over to table across from me. He looked to me like he was a bit detached. My curiosity quickly turned to a half embarrassed half confused mindset when he looked back and made eye contact with me. Thank God the cute barista yelled out, “Sammy!” with an annoyed yelp that could only be uttered by someone who was absolutely fed up with his or her current state of employment. The young man who had caught my attention scooted out of his chair and hastily walked to the counter to grab his coffee from the cute barista. He nodded in appreciation with a pleasant half smile and pulled out his wallet to grab the monetary appreciation that makes the menial minimum wage jobs worth it.
So as not to spill his coffee, he walked with a careful stride over to the table that he had been sitting at before and sat back down onto the chair. He then took the lid off of the cup of coffee and blew on it with short rhythmic puffs. I watched with a regretful curiosity at the strange character that had seemingly come in from daytime dreary.
I decided that I should interact with the oddity that lay before me and started thinking of techniques to go about it. Your humble writer thought to himself as to whether or not this decision would prevent him from carrying on the day with the glee and whimsy that was sure to come out of the bright and beautiful world that lay beyond the door to the café. Cooler heads prevailed and I decided to ask him how he was doing.
He glanced over at me, as if he was surprised that a human being was actually talking to him.
He replied, “I’ve had better, but a break from work is a break from life.”
I smirked and nodded in agreement. Then I asked him what he did and where he worked.
Unenthusiastically, he replied saying that he was a cashier at the A&P; grocery store.
I asked him why he seemed so unhappy with the job and he told me that he was tired of having to interact with the same boring people on a day-to-day basis.
“Why don’t you just quit the job if it makes you so unhappy”, I asked.
He replied with look of irritation and explained to me that no matter how hard he tried to break away, the job wouldn’t let him out.
I asked why that was and he said there is just something that was holding him to the cash register.
He said, “that the perfectly stacked shelves in his store make him numb enough not to care.”
What kind of annoying customers have you seen while working there? I replied, trying to change the depressing mood that the conversation was exhibiting.
He told me that once in awhile a bunch of annoying kids while come in and start knocking stuff over and trying causing a fuss.
I said he should just let the parents know that their kids are up to no good. He told me that half the time the parents don’t give enough of a **** to stop them and are just thankful that they aren’t mothering them for a change.
I told Sammy that I wasn’t looking for the basic answer that everyone in the service industry gives when they have complaints about their jobs. So I asked him, “What were some of the most out of the box customers that you have had come in to the A&P;?”
He told me that through out the years he has seen people come into the store with no shirt, no shoes, and no pants came in. He also explained how once, a rabid poodle came in and started trying to bite his co-worker, Stokesie. He even told me about how once, a former employee at the store tried to steal all the meat from the butcher by hiding the meat under his shirt. He said hat he had to chase him out the store with a baseball bat and that with every step more and more meat would fall out of his shirt. He then began to tell me how sad the store made him feel. He told me about all the fake people that he had to sit silently and watch while they went about their mediocre lives with an ignorant bliss. He told me how the people that came into the store had a certain stupidity that showed how suburbia could ruin a person without them even realizing that they had been ruined.
Once in awhile he would take some time to wonder just how messed up the folks that strolled through the aisles of the A&P; really were. He would always come to the same conclusion. That was that society had diminished the aspects of a meaningful life into an obscured picture of true happiness. The joy and fulfillment of a good life was now just strolling up and down the aisles of the neighborhood grocery store, taking food off the shelves like zombies, and paying for it with the money that they made working the same sort of depressing job. It was a twisted cycle that Sammy knew he had to break free from.
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 7:39 AM UTC
The side of things
The want the while the things who ding
For you
They smile
For you all the while
I see the things
They make us sing
For you
For you
The purple thing rings
All in my head
The music springs
And while it jings
We get up and sing
About the things that make us ring
For you
For you
I want the jing
For you
For you
don’t let us sink
and we will keep singing about the things keep ringing and the words keep dinging, forever jinging
for you
for you
Feb 8, 2016
Feb 8, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
The drum roll..
After 2 months the drum was beating
Faster than ever before
I've never wanted someone so much
There was so much tension
I wanted to just leave
If I stayed it would only complicate things
But I knew you were what I wanted
So I stayed
There was more passion than ever before
That was the happiest I've been
In two months
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 10:49 AM UTC
I completely understand why this happened
We fought and fought
It was inevitable
But I love you
And I have never stopped
Even when we fought and fought
I never questioned my feelings
I used to sit in Chemistry
And daydream
About what our life could be like
About everything that could go right
Without having a single thought
That anything could possibly go wrong
And now, a year later
I sit in Physics
And dream of what I could’ve done right
And how if I had done so
You might
Not have gone
And maybe you’d still be
My Chemistry Daydream
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 11:41 PM UTC
You were in the hospital.
I spent every minute I could right by your side.
When your parents left the room I would kiss you.
Later,
You asked me why I was there
I replied, "because I will always be here"
You said, "So, even if I'm married to another guy you'll still be there?"
I said, "of course because you just mean that much to me"
I will always be there when you need me.
Even though eventually we both might move on
There will always be a section of my heart that will be yours
I won't ever fully let go
not because I can't
but because I don't want to
for now
I want to spend every minute I can by your side
so I can kiss you when your parents leave the room
and tell you I will always be here
and assure you that everything will be alright
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 9:39 AM UTC
It isn't so easy to just let go
to let the memories, happiness, and love just wash away...
Maybe I don't want to let go
because I love the love and the happiness and the memories
because they were with you
we weren't healthy enough to continue
but when people are sick they don't just give up on life
they get better and keep going
I don't want to let you go
because you make me happy
I know we didn't work well together in a relationship
but we work well in keeping each other afloat
I may have lost you as my other half
but I'm not giving up my best friend
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 2:01 PM UTC
"As a core, idealistic truth, love is all that matters. In practice, especially between fundamentally flawed and unfinished beings, it’s not. Sometimes our love isn’t greater than whatever is doled out beside it. It doesn’t always win out. Sometimes it shouldn’t.
When you first realize someone could be something to you, the days become hazy and fluid and the last thing on your mind is logistics. It seems cold to be calculating at the beginning, to compartmentalize a person and see if those parts match up to the whole you envisioned.
We’re so quick to glide over whatever instinctive inkling resonates every time we realize there’s a void greater than our love for someone can fill. We press on, seldom realizing that every relationship culminates in deciding whether or not those instincts are the ones to follow.
Love exists in multitudes. In shades and elements and dynamics. In pieces and in learning, in growth and in change. In strangers and in soul mates. It does not exist as a single, expendable truth or experience. We’re so quick to attach that idea to one person or one relationship. We don’t want to go through the motions of experiencing those levels of commitment, attraction, interrelation with anybody else. The risk of losing is too great, but withholding waives the possibility of ever finding it in the first place.
Some relationships are long, steady, and easy; some are quick and enlightening and challenging. Some brush along our surface and others dive beneath and uproot us. Some might be temporary, one might last “forever.” That doesn’t mean it has to be the only one there is. That doesn’t mean there’s not something to be experienced, to be taken, to be learned, from whatever came before.
You can’t make a relationship something more than what it inherently is. You can’t make yourself fit into something you inherently won’t.
The whole of human love is what’s enough, the parts are just precursors.
We are unfinished, every last one of us. We have to let go of wishing each chapter was the last one because we’re afraid of how it could end otherwise. We have to stop forcing people into being the end-all-be-all for the same reason. We have to paint in contrasts, in love and from loss, and we have to find eventually that the whole picture is filled, and we are filled, from what we take, find, lose, gain, learn, give and create with the multitudes of people who loved us, in the multitude of ways that happens.
You’ll realize you knew the answers to your questions all along, it was only a matter of having the courage to act on them. You’ll let go when you don’t realize you’re doing it. You will have to learn that loving someone doesn’t always mean that being with them is the answer. You’ll realize that love is enough, but the kind of love that makes you stay only partly comes from the person you stay with. The other part comes from you.
You’ll realize you don’t have to be out of love to say goodbye. You’ll learn to separate the two: the loving part of you and the logical part of you. You’ll learn to use them in tandem. You’ll learn that two such things can be used in tandem, though you were taught otherwise and it seems impossible. What you’ll find eventually is the only love worth having is the kind that’s there even when the rest is gone."
-Brianna Wiest
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 6:58 PM UTC
She fooled me into thinking she loved me
She fooled me into thinking it was true
I was fooled into loving and caring
I did all those things just for you
I was kneeling with my arms open wide
My body was broken and so was my mind
I needed a place that I could hide
I kept on waiting and waiting
True love is what I needed to find
She put her arms tight all around me
And she pulled me right out of the sand
She brushed all the dirt off my shoulders
I told her that I was still broken
But still, she offered me her hand
Her words they glued me together
Her touch I will know forever
Her love made me good as new
I said, “Darling I will do anything for you”
I know in my heart that she loves me
I know in my heart that it’s true
I will always be loving and caring
Darling, I will do anything for you
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 3:42 PM UTC
I look in admiration
at someone who doesn't even give me a second glance
who can't separate themselves from their own selfish ways
for long enough to see what's in front of their god **** eyes
So how many times do I have to give you a second chance?
At love!
At life!
At happiness....
My problems may be untold
but at least I bring them to the surface every so often
so we don't have to be separated by any more distance
now we...
we can't be told how to make this work
we can't be told to make ourselves a commodity
and let everyone around look in empathy
and watch as this tears us apart
right
through
our
seems
Feb 22, 2014
Feb 22, 2014 at 10:24 PM UTC