Tag Archives: Mornings

People / Places, Postcards

An Incomplete List of Things That Got Me Through the Last Week of F*cking January, 2026

While scrolling my Monday in-box last week, I was gifted language for something I have felt but never had words for. 

When I stumble across such treasure, I try and make a point to write the word down in my journal.

I think of it like picking up seashells along a beach. 

The word came courtesy of Creative Mornings, whose January theme came courtesy of their Tehran chapter. 

I’ve copied their explanation here. Don’t think they’d mind. 

کورسو or Koorsoo (pronounced Koor·Soo) is a Farsi word meaning a glimmer of hope.

“In our darkest hours, when everything seems to have dimmed, sometimes a light remains—not bright, not certain, but real. That is Koorsoo—a faint glimmer of hope that dares to survive. Koorsoo is not about triumph or clarity; it is about the fragile yet unwavering light that keeps us going. A glance, a memory, a word—small things that prevent collapse. It represents the quiet resilience of those who continue in spite of the weight, who believe without guarantee. In a world that often normalizes despair, Koorsoo is a rebellion—soft, but profound. It reminds us: even the smallest spark matters.” 

My Monday morning — by which I mean my January — needed that reminder …  

… almost but not quite as much as I needed caffeine driving up Main Street Thursday morning before work. 

Anymore, I find my days need some back-up … which is among the reasons I collect seashells … metaphorically keep them in my pockets … so I can run my hands over their contour to remember, to remind myself.

Sometimes when I get to the small coffee shop off when it opens, the sun’s still low enough in the sky to bathe the interior bright. 

After giving my eyes a couple seconds to adjust, I noticed their humble logo reflected on an interior wall, crisp as a projection.

A fragile yet unwavering light.  

I asked the barrista if they knew when they built the place that the sun would reflect like that, or if that was just a happy accident. 

She wasn’t sure, but said it’s her favorite thing. 

After paying for my double cortado to go, I handed her a little extra cash for a pay-it-forward.

Spoke aloud the names aloud of a handful of humans who had recently reserved some kind thoughts in their day for me.  

If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.

Sitting here with my Sunday morning … a new month turned over … still needing reminders … still collecting sea shells … still remembering the importance of sharing our koorsoo with the world around us. 

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The Girls

All I Want …

The scene outside my window where I’m writing this. 

They visit every morning on their walk from the cemetery to the woods. 

It’s 10 degrees outside.

They’re hungry. 

But they’re not alone.

They stay together.

They’re giving each other baths right now.

It’s just the loveliest thing.

How they know to take care of each other. 

Sometimes I think they visit just to remind us how to be human.

Always makes me think of Joni Mitchell singing, “I want to shampoo you.”

Just right after, “All I really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and you too.” 

From the view outside my window, it doesn’t seem like too much to ask for in this world. 

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The Girls

Ripening …

I walked into the kitchen and saw one banana pulled apart from the bunch … set aside and ripening.

Smiled.

Emma’s home.

Went back a couple minutes later and she was there, fixing herself a bowl of cereal at the sink. Still in her pajamas. Wearing her glasses, too.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in her glasses. Felt what I feel sometimes glancing out the window just as the sun is waking up through the trees … a riot of itself and all its possibilities.

The unearned gift of catching the fleeting moment just before it assumes its responsibilities for a day that will all but take it for granted.

For some reason, seeing her in her glasses has always melted me.

How they’ve always framed a face that holds all the world can become.

She’s only herself in the morning … all poor eyesight and barefoot … and an abiding love for Lucky Charms.

Her glasses bring her into focus for me, and for a fleeting moment, I catch a glimpse of all her younger selves. The ones she doesn’t like being reminded of because she’s too busy looking forward.

It’s for me to look back.

I find myself wanting to keep her in her glasses in the kitchen for as long as I can.

So I mention the bananas … not just the ripe one set aside, but all the ones in the bunch, which have been pulled apart from each other and are starting to brown in the basket.

“I didn’t pull all those apart,” she corrected me.

I just assumed she had.

“Wasn’t me,” she confirmed.

“And that’s not how you ripen bananas, anyway. You keep the bunch together and put a ripe banana beside them.”

Oh.

“Ripe bananas release ethylene. It’s a gas … which breaks down cell walls and converts starch into sugar, eliminating the acid … which causes the other bananas to ripen.”

When she finished, the sophomore biomed major used her index finger to straighten the right side of her glasses, unconsciously.

A riot of herself and all of her possibilities.

Turned around and went back to her old room to savor her Lucky Charms.

I stood in the kitchen for a moment … in the still warm space between her presence and her absence.

Neither looking back nor looking forward … just awed by the sunrise.

Ripening, I guess.  

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Postcards

Whimming ….

Slept in this morning, which never happens. When it does though, it leaves me in a fog. Operating system has like a half second lag to it. Takes me a bit, but I manage to get the majority of my shit together and out the door. 

On an inspired whim I drive uptown to pop into Table for an espresso. Haven’t been in a while. Always good vibes to be had there. Park across the street and look left for traffic before crossing. Outta the corner of my eye, though, I spy a car parked in front of Joe’s Bakery. It’s pushing 9:30, which as any Saturday sinner will tell you, is pushing it for Joe’s.

On my morning’s second whim, I reroute and take the catty corner of Main and Chestnut, catch the Open sign still hanging on the door. Walk in and look left. See one lonely sugar donut in the case, waiting for me. Joe’s at the register finishing with a coupla customers before he walks over.

“I’ll take your last sugar donut.” 

“There’s a cinnamon twist left, too if you want that,” he says, gesturing to the other end of the tray. 

I’m not so foggy to understand that this is not a multiple choice question. 

Ask him to throw in a sugar twist so the three of us are covered. 

“Just put $3 on the counter,” he says. “You’re my last customer.” 

An honor and a blessing, I say, knowing that under the wire is more than any of us deserve.

As he hands me the bag, he says, “Best donuts in town you got right there.”

… leaving me no choice but to say, “Amen.” 

“When you see good, praise it,” Alex Haley once wrote, though I imagine he wasn’t thinking of donuts at the time. 

Or, you know, maybe he was.

By the time the bells on the door finish jingling behind me, I am convinced that I just might be their corresponding angel. Walking to the corner I see that the new deli that just opened is open. Whereupon I invest the morning’s third whim. 

Order a $2 coffee and take a seat at the long counter by the window overlooking Chestnut that, turns out, was made for writing Saturday morning postcards. 

I write to tell her how I am rolling sevens, as my tall cup slowly burns off the fog, 

After addressing the envelope, “Kindly deliver to ….” which is also the invisible note that I pinned to my shirt when I left the house,  I cross the street and finally make it to Table. 

Sit down with my cortado and crack open Jack Gilbert so he can further melt my morning.

And say thank you to and for the lag in my operating system.  

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