We sat outside in wooden chairs at a small, green, metal table. We shared a lemon cake which she cut into nine bite-sized pieces. She sipped a cappuccino with cardamom. I drank a regular coffee. Facing twenty-fourth street, half-way between Mission and Valencia, the sun warmed our faces. The palm trees swayed.

At the rainy-day corner cafe, morning passes buttoned up with a jacket hood pulled down. Red brick walls and large shop windows – foreign, familiar, and idyllic. This could be the Parisian bistro I’ve never visited with the graceful company I do not keep. I am here and somewhere else  – intimately alone, dreaming.

I heard her crying. I didn’t look back – the woman leaning on green, metal postal relay box at the corner of Post and Powell. There might have been a police officer there too. She’s one of the many homeless that we don’t look at. Pants half-way down and crying. We don’t look.

The sidewalks are slick from rain. In the diner with wood paneling, the short order cooks and servers speak quick Spanish. Accents are everywhere. It’s strange and wonderful to hear people speaking different languages. I don’t understand any of them, but the British man sitting a few booths over would like decaf.

The sunlight through the  oval plane window moves like a time-lapse film of light moving across a barren wall. A movie where someone heals alone in a room as time and light moves from days to weeks. Except this isn’t that movie. It’s a plane. I’m flying west, flying backwards in time

The morning sky is the color of wind. The winds sway in the wind. While walking the wind, he stops to wind then scratches at the wind. We pass two winds who bark and wind alongside the wrought iron wind. My winds water and wind drips down my winds. Today’s forecast: wind.

Taco burps with a hint of lime rise and rest in my throat. It’s evening. The pains of the day have settled in my joints. The shoulder feels pinched, ankle swollen. My hungry mind checks phone apps like opening the fridge every few minutes expecting the decadence of chocolate cake to appear.

The southeastern sky is southwestern red. My thinking is apocalyptic. It’s dawn and I’m already contemplating the ends of things: days and weeks and storms not yet arrived. Next to me is the January Special Remembrance Section of the newspaper. Once-full lives captured in 48 folded pages – as if that were possible.

Under a milk jug sky, a mourning dove rests weary on a telephone line. Squirrels hop branches on a crooked pine shaking loose last night’s rain. A swarm of blackbirds pass overhead. Dozens of tiny black sails flap feathery in the wind.  I can almost feel their beating in the pre-spring dawn.