Lost Coffee

This is what I want. Like some people want Brazillian butt lifts, or nose jobs, or nips and tucks. Like they want sprawling mansions in the suburbs, or to be young forever. Or a million dollars from the lottery. Or some rich uncle to die and will them his vast fortune. Or to marry some ridiculous celebrity and to be known. Not me. I want to be unknown. If I rubbed some magic lamp, I'd ask for none of that. I don't yearn for money, or anyone famous, or to be famous. I want to no longer be slave to a job, beholden to others. I want a cabin in the woods where it takes considerable effort to find me — not that anyone is looking or ever will. And down the way from my cabin, I want a building like this. With hot-red neon bleeding onto the forest floor.

I will call it Lost Coffee. And every morning I want to walk down a path to this building and unlock the door with a skeleton key, turn the closed sign to open, and flip the switch to that neon sign. I want to make coffee and sit at a clear-coated walnut counter and read books I never had the time to read. I want to study ancient Egypt and know all about The Roman Empire and Byzantine. 

I want a cowbell on the door that seldom clangs. It doesn't matter if no one comes, or if they do. I want to have the best pecan pie and scones you would ever eat, and the best coffee to ever cross my lips. I want to learn to do tattoos and offer those, too. I want people to have to make considerable effort to get here. No room or path for cars. The only way in is by foot from my cabin or the nearby lake. And the nearest town is at least 10 miles away. I want a restraining order against society.  

I want to serve sandwiches and little else. I want a wall of books. 1,000 of my favorite books. Nothing I don't like. I have no time for filler or nonsense. For pretentious people or their ideas. No time for meaningless conversation or indecision. I want no noise and plenty of silence. I want a grammophone and some records. I want Mozart and Beethoven's Ninth. I want a movie projector and old black-and-white movies in the woods. Good movies.  

I want to dream of this place and being there. I want it to fill my head when I am lost in this life I don't belong, and when I am dying, so much so that when my soul leaves my body, I have a moment to be there if I never phsyically made it. I want to write stories as I wait for people who will never come. Wonder how my kids are doing now that they're grown. Write a letter. Send a card. I want to see a smiling face every now and then, but not too often. I want to dress proper and wear old suits and ties from the twenties and thirties. No blue jeans. No ballcaps. I want to smell the pine trees and the rain blowing through an open door or window to mingle with the coffee and pastries and an occasional cigar. 

I want to age here with the trees and the bear that wonders by now and then and peaks into the window. I want to name him something ridiculous. I want to wait for you. I want the neon lights of this place to burn in your mind wherever you are. I want you to give up everything and come, but only because you want to and it is equally your dream as much as mine. I want you to wear what you want to wear. But I can see you in a flower-print dress and oversized rain boots. I can smell your perfume sitting next to me at the counter drinking your coffee. I can smell you a thousand miles away. I can feel you in my dreams. I can hear your laughter in the empty room of my thoughts. My head is a funeral parlor or a whorehouse.

I want to shut off the lights, lock the door, and walk back to the cabin with you. No talk of jobs we don't have, the chaos of the world of which effects us not, or trivial things. Speak to me of books, of flowers, and history that is far enough away that it doesn't matter anymore. Of God and Jesus Christ. Of hopes and dreams. Or recipes and fond memories. Of good things. Not of anything sinister or salacious. Not of society from which we resigned. I want to love you fiercely. But you already know. And everything that comes from your lips is poetry. Nothing is blurted. It is thought of and considered before offered, carefully, because it is your eloquent craft. And you, like me, enjoy the silence you've mastered. Our souls speak when our mouths don't.

You hold my hand as we walk home, naturally, Mr. and Mrs. Nobody, to make love until we fall asleep to the silence of the woods. To the rain. To the crickets and the wind. To the owls and the rustling of the things we've never before seen. Nocturnal neighbors we haven't met. Maybe tomorrow someone will come. Maybe not. This is how I want people to come into my life. And this is how I want them to leave. With a hug and the clang of a cowbell.

I want to dream of you. Dream you to life. To existence. Even in your absence, even in the abstraction of a far-fetched dream, you are better than the reality of anyone else. I love sleeping with the thought of you more than the body of an intruder, however attractive and tender. I want to be left alone. I want you to love lost coffee as much as I do. I want to make up for all coffee we've never had together. And, perhaps selfishly, I want you to dream of me and this place, this peaceful lovely place, as much as I dream of you. There is, and has always been, only you, Mrs. Nobody.