Sunrise

On Sunday, I was hired at a café, the one I saw in Old Montreal. The next day at Alexandra Basin, I declared to the beautiful stranger: “I’m a barista at Génoise et Thé.”

“Is that so,” she said, not looking up from the scribbles in my old journal.

“I’d come here anyway, is what I’m saying. The Old Port is the best place for reading before work.”

“Hard to read with your eyes staring up at me,” she replied with a smile. “Still on that page?”

My ears feeling hot, I went back to Le Silence de la mer. The next time I looked up, all there was next to me on the bench was my journal, its pages flapping in the wind. Dawn was gone, and was not mine to find til the next day. When the time came, I left to go to work.