Ramble Day 31: Dream Bookstore Coffee Shop

Each time you sneeze, a version of you in a parallel universe briefly swaps places. Describe what your counterpart experiences in your world—and what they leave behind. (I’ll describe what we both feel in each other’s world) One second I am in my room eating my mom’s baked bread with eggs and reading my online book, the next I am in a private room painting at 6 am, two hours before my shift starts. This is how I prepare for the day, for the social interactions, the unhappy customers, the buzzing coffee machines, and all the chatter in the busy hours. I put my brushes down, wear an apron, and the strumming of the guitar in my headphones carries me to the main room where the coffee bar and cashier counter are. I grab the cutter, still humming to myself as the early sun shines in through the wooden-framed windows, and slice open the carton boxes of new books. The shop owner who was just painting is transported to my place, the confines of my room. She looks around, smiling sadly at the potential of this large room with a slanted attic room ceiling. She frowns at the lack of paintings, at the reading spot missing an artistic and functional little table, at the plain furniture that need a pop of color, perhaps a string of painted flowers in the framing borders. She’s never lived in a place without challenging it, without pushing it to its potential, compelling it to be something else than what makes it feel safe and comfortable. As though my counterpart whispered what I had to do, I picked up the books I had ordered and arranged them on the shelves. Then, in little notecards held up by wooden card holders, I wrote descriptions such as “when you want someone to take your hand and show you around the cities of Palestine” for the book I Saw Ramallah, “when you’re missing home” for …., and “when you want the comfort of closure” for the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. I place the important and more popular books at the protruding oak shelf. Feeling my other self lead me, I smoothly place the books from different parts of the world in their rightful shelves, African Literature, Arab Literature, Persian Literature, Japanese Literature, Korean Literature, Latin Literature, and the last two bookshelves are for European American and North American Literature. I straighten the vintage framed world map on one of the walls on my way to the coffee counter. The soft guitar melodies are no longer soothing and I feel the nerves of having to please everyone and anyone that walks in that door, for the first time wishing to swap back with the girl in my room, comfortable and safe.