An Intimacy (ii)

Sunday mornings are a lonely time. I like it when I can take my cup of coffee black in the still privacy of twilight, watch indirect rays of sunrise scamper, scatter across roof shingles and vine-laden brick. Autonomy is another word for lonely, and I like my routine - a slow-silent morning without language or pretense, just the deep comfort of choice.

Sunday mornings I set last week’s meal prep box out on the stoop, and always between 8:09 and 8:46am, arrives a fresh order exchange. I’ve never met the driver, but I know him by screen-flashes of automated texts and the lingering smell of tobacco permeating cardboard. Wafts of smoke-licked raisin and sun-dried bark flutter about my kitchen as my pocket knife slices through strips of packing tape, an unexpected-turned-ritual intimacy of life.