It's a Good Day

 

The steam curled upward like a habit it had kept for years. I didn’t notice it at first—not until the morning light caught it sideways, and the shape turned from cloud to ribbon. Something about that line made the table feel anchored.

Outside, someone passed by with a bouquet tucked under their arm, wrapped in pale brown paper. I couldn’t smell the flowers, but I imagined them just the same. Jasmine, maybe. Or something else that never shouts but always stays.

I stirred the coffee slowly, not to mix but to listen. The sound is different when the cup is wide. It echoes gently, as if the ceramic wants to reply but isn’t sure what the question was.

The sunlight warmed only half the table, leaving the other half in a cool shadow. I moved my notebook just enough so the edge touched the line between them. That line, I think, knows how to stay still better than most of us.

From the kitchen came a soft clang—distant enough not to interrupt, close enough to reassure. I’ve always liked the honesty of that sound: unstyled, inevitable, and somehow polite.

A woman in a navy coat sat down across the room. She didn’t look around. Just opened a book, thumbed past the first ten pages like she’d already read them in a dream, and began at the eleventh.

The light shifted again. Not dramatically—just a ripple across the wall, like the café itself was breathing in slower rhythms than the people inside it. I held my breath once, to match it. Only for a second.

My spoon leaned against the saucer and stayed there, upright. It looked like it had something to say. Maybe about gravity. Or maybe about the quiet arrangement of small objects that understand patience better than we do.

Behind me, a child laughed. Not loudly. The kind of laugh you hear and don’t turn to see, because the sound itself is already enough. It lingered longer than expected. Some acoustics are shaped by joy, not architecture.

A barista placed a cup at the counter and looked toward no one in particular. The foam carried a spiral—not perfect, not planned—but pleasing. I almost stood to claim it, just to keep the pattern from going unnoticed.

Someone dropped their pen. The sound was sharp, but the moment wasn’t broken. It folded back into the afternoon like it belonged. I wonder if time, here, is arranged by these minor things and not by clocks.

As I left, I glanced back—not for anything I forgot, but for the room itself. The table, the cup, the sun half-resting on the floor. It felt like nothing needed to change for a while. And that, too, was worth writing down.