5:56 P.M.

I think I like coffee shops.

I just haven’t found the one yet.

The sun shines brightly through the window. Not the kind of window shaped like half a hexagon. Not the kind with a seat and pillows, with a book placed half-open, maybe half-closed, somewhere near the candlelight. But the kind of window with a man-made lake outside.

The summer kind.

Leah likes the sun coming through the window. But she likes the sun at a specific angle, which it only takes at a specific time. She’s only caught it there twice, but both times she’s stopped and stared. Straining her neck to see with eyes looking directly into the light. Transfixed by what, if someone asked, she wouldn’t know. But Leah knows this: the water glittering under the sunlight, reflecting it back with identical intensity, and laurel green clouds floating behind a blinding, distant light, and her staring at it with burning eyes - it’s pretty. The kind of pretty Leah’s mother sees when she looks at the waves on a sandy beach with seashells and turquoise-green water. The kind of pretty Leah doesn’t get bored of seeing. It reminds her of something. Maybe it reminds her of a future where she’ll think back and remember. Maybe it reminds her of what she’d like to remember.

It’s moments like this that make Leah think about how it is she thinks - in images. It’s how Leah knows she’d like coffee shops, but also knows she hasn’t found the one she’d like. It’s how Leah knows she’d like lavenders but hasn’t ever smelled one in her entire life. It’s how she knows that she likes buildings, even though skyscrapers seem to feel like mirror mazes and cities like crowded jails.

It is right there in an image she can never paint, see, or describe.

So yes, Leah likes coffee shops. Even if she can never finish a cup of coffee. Even if she can make better coffee. She likes the little shops in red, green, and blue lined up outside the window of the coffee shop. The way the colors turn a bit dimmer when it rains and the yellow lights inside a bit warmer, when the drops of rain stick to the glass outside. She likes the wooden interior and the empty streets and how the hazy warmth around her confuses her of the time. She can’t fully grasp the image, though. The minute she begins to stare at it in her mind, it slips away. She thinks it, feels it, and forgets it. In seconds, it all runs away. And all she knows is, she’d like coffee shops. But only when it’s raining outside with little shops lined up and no one coming by to shop because…why? That’s something Leah would also like to know.

Why?

Perhaps Leah knows deep down somewhere. She knows she thinks in images because words aren’t loud enough for wishes. It’s easy to name wants, but harder to name what feelings should accompany them when they’re fulfilled. So Leah never names any. Never writes any. Never wishes the way she was taught wishes are made. Thus, most of the time, Leah thinks she never has any. But it’s days like today, when scenes play out the way they almost do in her mind, that make her wonder if those images are perhaps her wishes. If perhaps, that is what wishing feels like.

If her friends heard her thoughts, they’d probably laugh. String words into sentences that should not make sense and would not, if someone else were given those words to string into comprehension. They’d make Leah laugh, too. They’d make the lack of something feel like the lack of nothing. Suddenly, Leah almost misses them. Almost. And that almost feels very much like an almost. Like the distance between seeing and understanding, there is this distance Leah can’t cross. It’s a wall made of fabric, which can sometimes make the almost feel full. It can flow and bend in a way real walls never will. Warp in ways real walls never can. But it’s always there. It’s in the distance between hoping and believing, in the pause Leah always takes before closing her eyes and feeling tension, but never faith. It’s in the image of weightlessness expanding in her chest and in the knots, not listening the slightest bit to Leah, stubbornly fixing themselves a home there. It is the almost that comes up whenever Leah thinks of her friends.

So Leah takes another long glance out the window. Just a few seconds where things feel okay even though they are. Or should be. And the weight disappears as she looks at the light, the best she can. It feels like a moment that belongs in another time and to someone else. So it feels stolen. Not quite hers, but hers. And the lightness there, somewhere inside her, stays. It stays for the full minute after Leah looks away. It stays and feels like reaching somewhere after meandering, wandering, praying, but never finding. So for the first time in her life, Leah doesn’t listen when her mind tells her to. When that expansion turns to burning and that voice in her head returns, Leah doesn’t listen. She doesn’t judge, reason, justify, or predict “whys” for the way things won’t fall into the places they should. She waits, and she feels her chest burn. And then she feels that burning fade. It leaves behind a comforting silence that tells her nothing and shows her nothing.

So Leah leaves her room. She opens the door and runs down the stairs to her kitchen. She walks on the cool tiles without slippers, and she opens the cupboard with mugs that never get used because of the easier paper ones. She takes out her favorite mug and sets it down on the counter. Then she moves to the other cupboard to her right and takes out a pan, pouring a small, unmeasured amount of water into it. And as the water boils on the stove, Leah watches it bubble. She knows it won’t take long, and she doesn’t explain to herself why. Because she knows the why, too. It bubbles and bubbles a bit more. Leah pours it into her mug, and it fills a few tablespoons' worth. Into it, she whisks ground instant coffee. She watches it splash and turn from a liquid dark brown into a hazel cream, before pouring cold milk to the top of her mug. And as she mixes the hazel cream into the cold milk, watching the color shift through the changes, Leah knows that everything is still as mixed and jumbled as it always has been. But today, the slight smile on her face just wavers. It doesn’t fade.