Inside a Barnes & Noble Café

I sit in the Starbucks café and look around me at the faces brimming with the aroma of
Café Lattes and Café Mochas.

They peer at the words dancing in front of them,
their rectangular eyes resting
on bridged noses, wondering where
Shakespeare found his talent, and the meaning
of juxtaposition.

Some carry their laptops with them
fidgeting in their seats as
they try to understand the way to
connect with knowledge without seeming
desperate. They hunger at the smell
of curiosity and ability.

Others sit in a huddle, reading
anxiously over algorithms, intervals and
quadratic equations. Their scarlet eyes tell of
desperation and lost scholarships balanced
precariously on final exams.

A few are mothers, breathing in the
caffeine, enough to replace a
few hours of sleep they don’t have. Their children –
some sitting and reading Tigger and Pooh or
the Backyardigans, others running
from their tables – leave them
yearning for solitude.

Most are silent, oblivious to the
cell phone conversations of breakups and
business arrangements or the intermittent
brewing and foaming that takes place
behind the counter. They sit steadily,
eyes fixed, engulfed in metaphysics and Milton.

I wonder if I had ever been like them, noses
insistent on snorting the words and becoming addicted
to layers of philosophy, submerged
in a world of similes and butterflies, oblivious to
antonyms and the bearded man at the counter.

© 2009 Alexandra Penaloza Alessandri