She was told at a young age:
Work hard to follow your dreams. It’ll all follow through naturally.
Words like that outlasted the warmth she’d felt through her grandmother’s embrace. Thereafter no more and her world’s fallen cold. As if everyone had copied grandma’s sacred words and wilted it into clichés. That’s what remained. After all, she couldn’t remember; it’s been too long since the last of grandma’s laughter, stories, cooking, hugs- all a distant figment of consciousness…
It was sort of like a breeze, intangible but ’tangible’. Hard to say; she’d followed the ‘air’ of her grandmother after burial, seeking the warmth beyond memory’s cold wake.
Were her subsequent beliefs grounded by fog? False promises? Wisdom breathed, she figured, may as well be myths with how shrouded everything’s been.
Mind hazy: She’d peered down at the cup; next a sip. The foam sinks below the velvet latte. Warmth sears the tongue but she finds comfort in the following numbness. Leaned by the frigid sill. What met her eye amidst the window in frost: a glimpse of a name-tag in the reflection. Dissonance; like how one skims over the names other than their own in a roster, apathy over the tag labeling her: ‘Zoé’.
”If it’s through other people that we build our own aspirations, then I shouldn’t feel jealous of their success.” Zoé kept in the nook of her mind when eyeing the bakery ahead. But sometimes it just falls out. It was easy to blame the unfairness of life, and life wasn’t going to wait for her to get back on her feet. The world spins, no other choice but to flow with the wind like snow.
Window rattling gusts…
It’s enough a struggle as it is for others.
Zoé internalized; Everyone’s working hard in life as it is, so asking on help for myself is selfish.
The snow laid atop sleeping lilies and pathways. The wind whipping snow onto your face, it was hard to see the scene… There: Just another café, and everyone’s bustling past on their merry way. A “Hiring” sign by the door barely discernible. Nearly hidden.
You enter;