Lost in the Quotidian

I keep thinking about chai. Not the pre-packaged kind. Strong black tea with ginger and cloves and peppercorn, maybe cinnamon too. And milk and sugar. I keep thinking about that, but to make it I’d have to go home.

Instead, I am sitting in a cafe drinking a cafe au lait. Billie Holiday is singing “Stormy Weather.” It’s pure gray outside. The weather is filling up all the negative space with hints of a thunderstorm.

Yesterday I went to the supermarket, splashing in my flip-flops through the puddle of a parking lot. I shivered in the aisles. And dashed back to my car, flinging water everywhere, while everyone else waited under the eaves for the storm to cease.

Back home, plastic bags dripping water onto the floor, I could have made chai. Instead I took a shower, and waited to be in this cafe today, next to my friends, thinking about spices simmered in black tea and the smell of ginger.