Since I forgot to Na on Monday, as I promised myself, and since I didn’t Na on Tuesday due to pressing engagements (Target, the teeth people), upon leaving the stables today I stopped at a No’ridge Starbucks on my way home, hobbling delicately inside, my inner thighs imploding from a mere 30 mins of struggling to stay astride a super-fit thoroughbred. Ow.

The line was almost out the door. 20 people worked the counter and yet all of us prospective coffee buyers did not move. Every stupid table was full. Pity. I felt inspired by the artwork—an African elephant, ears flared, a vaguely Warhol-esque silkscreen visual, spanned a dimly lit wall. I could have written under that elephant. I just know it.

So I hobbled a few shopfronts down to Western Bagel and purchased their atrocious coffee and plunked before one of many (vacant) tables stuck through the middle by orange WB umbrellas (tables stuck through middles, of course, not me—ha ha!) and I tried very hard to keep my eyes averted from the black and white awnings of DSW far across the lot (spring sandals collection!) or the $10 Or Less bookstore next to it (DSW, $10 Or Less books—please don’t ever ask me to choose).

And I pulled my awkwardly sized black journal from my satchel.

And. I. Drew. A. Flower.

To be continued…

Note: why are all wedge sandals so high? I’m 5’10”. I can’t run around town at 6’2″—besides falling and breaking my neck I am forced to shout down to the world—hate that…also hate sucking up car exhaust while sitting at a cafe table—but perhaps there’s no escaping it, whether seated here, or in Paris, Bath, Des Moines…perhaps cafe table is synonymous with exhaust…must be a poem in the Starbucks elephant’s silkscreen body…can’t seem to write with a pen anymore…I once knew a woman who renamed herself Ellipsis…seriously…she was a masseuse and the girlfriend of a misogynist…unfortunate, all that…but probably a poem in it.

And here is a horse.

Thank god that lady’s off my back.