Now Playing: Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran (WR pressed “play” and it was on the playlist. I don’t judge her musical tastes, and vice versa. I hope.)

I was just getting ready for the day yesterday, hair damp and writing dreams intact, when I made the mistake of checking my phone. And there it was: the announcement. My favorite café, the beloved, occasionally quirky darling of my tea-seeking heart, is closed for renovations. 

Effective immediately. No timeline given. Just vague promises of something “fresh” and “new.”

Word Raccoon took to the fainting couch. I nearly joined her.

Supposedly they posted a notice the day before. 

Renovation? Resurrection? Rebranding? A rebuke to those of us who dare to love it? 

Let the record show that the last time you closed (and switched hands), I mourned. I parked my car outside the shuttered shop a couple of times just to tell the shop that it wasn’t the boss of me, that I would be just fine. 

I told myself it was nostalgia. I knew it was grief. (WR is holding my hand. She wishes she had been there.) 

(I might or might not have an audio clip of the shop a few hours before it closed, just the ambient sounds in the background to remind me of the years I spent writing there.)

Ask me how much writing I did in the months that it was closed with no promise of it reopening. How abandoned I felt. Without a writing home. 

No, don’t. 

It took someone asking me where I was writing to admit that I wasn’t. To do something about it. 

I will be fine now. It’s not that serious; I will just go to the other coffee shop in town until it reopens. 

Word Raccoon says not so fast about returning to it when it does reopen. She doesn’t know if she can trust the new/old shop now, if they can close without advance notice like that. 

WR, quit it! I’m not letting you become a hermit again. 

Anyway, that planned soup lunch with my friend? 

Rescheduled. 😣

That’s okay, because no one told me that SO MANY literary journals close to submissions at the end of September. And oh, yeah, into October. 

Loves, I have spent the past two days submitting poetry. That was not on the schedule. (Not complaining because it gave me the opportunity to revisit poems I haven’t looked at in a while. And I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do it, but I’m ready to be writing again.) 

Speaking of…this afternoon a poem idea raised its hand in the middle of all of that. “I…I have something to say.” 

I wanted to fob it off, but Word Raccoon closed the Submittable tab. (And Chillsubs. And Duosuma. And P & W…and…)

I knew the poem wasn’t going away, and I didn’t want it to, anyway. I chucked it under the chin and said, “What, love? I’m listening.”

I only made a quick sketch of it but y’all, I like this one a lot. I think WR does, too. Her eyes are blurred with happiness. Then again, she’s always half love drunk on poetry.

But I swear, I imagined there was only so much you could write about a topic. Guess not. I don’t know if that makes me infinitely creative (ha!) or just singleminded. 

It comes and goes in delightful waves, Babe, you know? 

And I’m not mad about it.