Thirty minutes ago the Fall semester of ‘05/’06 was beginning at Stetson University. Fifteen minutes ago we were arriving at Snowshoe Ski Resort in Virginia, exhausted after an overnight drive that followed more white nights of finals punctured by stress expressed in hoarse voices of fatigue smoking half a carton a night and stomachs screaming of ripped lining from the coffee that pounded through our veins. Thirteen minutes ago Christmas had come and gone. Twelve minutes later I was saying goodbye, my eyes brimming with tears. After that all too short half hour I found myself on a bus, driving on the wrong side of the road and taking me from Gatwick to Oxford. I’ve been here seven days that seem seven years and three months is an eternity—until it is over. The heater blows warm air that makes the milk in my coffee swim and twirl in a brown that is as bleak as the city surrounding me. The coffee cools, my cigarette burns itself into a delicate roll of ash until it reaches the speckled filter—Gauloises Blondes, “Liberté toujoursâ€â€”my sweater gets caught on the shiny brass coin that tells me, as if it was of Earth shattering importance, that it is the prestigious table #4 of the Cock and Camel on Gloucester and George St. where I sit and scribble these words. Josh sits next to me, sharing table number four, scowling and intermittently grinning at the open book in front of him—a thick volume of twentieth century literary criticism. His pen races across a yellow legal pad, furiously taking notes. Through the window, cars still drive on the wrong side of the road. Next to me, Josh flips the page of his pad and takes a sip of coffee. Outside, the sky is a pristine sort of blue that rings of cold. The sun shines for the first time in the seven years I’ve spent here. Last year, the wind was still blowing and rain splattered the perpetually wet streets. A woman passed me on Magdalen Bridge, between the rain drops. Her boots clicked on the glistening street and she clutched her coat—as dreary and grey as the city surrounding her—about her body. She looked ahead of her in a determination focused on something so divorced from the world that contained that glistening street upon which her heels clicked. Under one arm, she tightly held a ragged doll, but she herself was very far away. I suppose I was, too, but we were still in two very different places, far from the grey skies and the leafless, stark branches of death-shrouded trees and the rain that drowned the world.The inside of my coffee is now rimmed with lines, an inverted measuring cup of sips that mark years. The milk has stopped swirling. The coffee is cold. I light another cigarette and take a drag. A cruel poster on the inside of the window reminds me I’ll spend Valentine’s Day alone, maliciously offering me a “3 Course Meal—£25.00 per person†and a hotel room. “…Treat that someone special in your life…Book now to avoid disappointment.†It cuts like a knife, flaunting its showy pink hearts. By the time Valentine’s Day rolls around, it’ll be another thirty years. My hair will be grey, like the sky is usually outside the window, assuming I have any left. I’ll be shifting my wheelchair-bound-body and my bones will crackle and snap like the dead tree branches outside, withered, weathered, and aged by the wind. The streets will still be wet. I’ll be wondering which glass I left my dentures in and hoping I don’t choke on them the next time I grab a random glass to choke down my pill cocktail. I counter-intuitively pour more milk into my already-cold coffee. I try to camouflage the measuring cup lines of time, of years. The coffee is now as white as my own skin, the two equally unaccustomed to the sunlight and blue skies that line the withered browns of buildings outside. Perhaps I am already more dead inside than these skeletons of trees, snapping and popping in the wheelchairs of perpetually wet streets. I add more milk.
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