“Hey, how are you, what can I get for you?”

     “Just a tall vanilla latte with oat milk.”

     Things you say to someone whom you’ll never see again. They see either the best or worst of you: none of the mundane nuances in-between, none of the sketches you pretend you never drew nor any ambiguity-wracked final scene. You owe nothing to them, and they owe nothing to you beyond a scripted pleasantry and purchased pleasure, and perhaps a bottle of Elmer’s glue to patch up the stray sadness they measure.

     Yes, strangers are kind, aren’t they? Too oblivious to your faults to give a damn, but also oblivious to the virtues you convey and so unable to build a lasting dam.

     “Beautiful day out today, isn’t it?”

     “Yeah, if only every day looked the same.”

     Careful what you wish for; days will soon start blending together, rendering “after” the same as “before” and storms equal to sunny weather. Still strangers are a constant, while friends are constantly coming and going, lending dusk a dawn tint when nothing else is glowing. Though there’s a weariness under their eyes burdened by incessant cycles of small talk and the failures that spawn from too many tries, too many keys getting stuck in the lock.

     “Can I get you anything else?”

     “Yes, some more water, please.”

     It’s the littlest things that wind up breaking our backs. The consistent inconsistencies that cause us confusion. The pervasive relaxation from which we can’t relax. The truth that leaves us in a state of delusion. Our lives are divided into periods of sobriety of which cashiers and waitresses couldn’t possibly be aware, hiding behind constructs of propriety and the backs of those for whom we care.

     There’s nothing in the dark that will not come to light despite our illusions to the contrary. No period of peace that will not end with a fight plus pleas to Krishna and the Virgin Mary.

     “Any fun plans this weekend?”

     “Not much, just chilling.”

     “Nice.”

     When you don’t have to smile, you can smile all you want, you can be the nicest person in the world; writing in the most beautifully basic font with strands of hair simultaneously straight, wavy, and curled. There is nothing to be held accountable for, nothing which you have to confess to Father Joe, nothing but an ever-open closed door through which you see all that you know you don’t know.

     But I’m afraid I love strangers so much that I will want to make some of them friends, destroying their mysterious touch and hurling endless beginnings towards concrete ends.