oh, hai.

I wake up. it is raining. the cold pushed away the heat and sent the addicts indoors, children's bare bodies stuffed into jackets, their legs stiff walkeing to buses,n unaccustomed to the weight of winter attire and parent worry, the bare chested summers and indifference of parents not weeks behind. i called in sick out o fhabit to a job i was reminded that i no longer had. the steady rain has lasted for three hours now, and i decide to climb out of bed. like being born. being born seems much simpler than dying. there are nine degrees of dying, but onlyone degree of birth. if your mother took medications, is that second-degree birth? If she had a c-section, will you have athird-degree life? I get out of bed and into the cold. It wasn't a day like this when he died, a second-degree death but a death all the same, just the same as life never changes by degrees.

I decide to get coffee. I do not bother to brush my hair but I wrap myself in a jacket, a light jacket, i don't mind the cold so much. He wore sunglasses, and he would have put hem on. He was getting groceries. I look for shoes, but only find sandals and decide they will have to do. I am going get coffee.

I step into the car and turn on the heat. He turns on the AC. Full=blast, directly at the face. Buckle belts, check mirrors, back up. Drive into traffic. I hate this city. there are red light and speed cameras demanding that you behave while the cops and ambulances are stuck in the sludge that traffic becomes when everyone under-behaves only at chosen intersections. They release the fury later, when no one is looking, crashing into each other just to feel a touch of closeness. I pass a wreck. He starts to go but quickly stops--a car speeds through red. A flash. A camera catches an offenders liscense plate and I am startled by lightning. But the rain still comes slow, steady, beating on the sun roof. He opens it to catch a breeze in the summer air.

Coffee isn't far. Neither is groceries. An area once fields grown up overnight to be a full-fledged yuppie, brick fences, ivy, and all. I get out. He locks his doors.

I join the queue, people hopping from one foot to the next and blowing into their hands as if they haven't noticed that the shop is overly warm. He pulls his arms closer passing the chill of the freezer section. I wait and peruse the delicacies on display--pastries, nothings. I pick up a mug to study its heft, wonder if one could actually mug someone with it. He picks up two apples and stares, trying to figure out the difference between organic and inorganic except for the price. Someone ahead me shuffles off quick, fast, and in a hurry. A problem with this place: everyone in a hurry.

I make it to order. He checks out, deciding that the difference between organic and inorganic is too much to contemplate today and passing on the apples. He gets broccolli instead. Someone handed him a sample of overpriced coffee. Someone hands me overpriced coffee.

I turn to leave. He steps out of the store with a cup of over priced coffee and broccolli florrets. He decides the coffee is too bitter and turns to throw it away in a nearby can. My coffee is wrong, I get back in line. I wonder if there is a degree to giving a customer the wrong thing. If you meant to, is that first degree? If you knew it was wrong but gave it anyway hoping the customer didn't find that, was it second degree? Is there a third-degree of customer dissatisfaction?

I order again. He turns away from the trash can, stopping for a moment to let a young woman with a buggy filled to the brim with children and pop-tarts rush by. I get my corrected order. His foot hits the asphalt. I seer my tongue on the coffee.