brot

Rising earlier than usual, in the cooler air of the dimmer part of the morning, I breakfast in two courses. First, coffee in a thin, straight-sided, white cup, a narrow wedge of sweet cake smelling slightly of olive oil, and some hybrid citrus sliced into sixths from a crate sent from a distant, southerly port. A few days ago my doughty, smiling postman had climbed to my apartment door bearing the crate before him, and after bringing it inside I had slashed it open and seized two orange fruit, dashed down the stairs and chased him back to his truck to give them to him. He promised to plant any seeds he found in his back yard.

The light comes up through red curtains and hits the roses on the work table while I eat the curved sections, juice dribbling down my chin, fighting the temptation to shift over to the computer and get the keyboard sticky with my tangerine-grapefruit fingers.

An hour and a half later, I have the second course, with tea. The tea is green and flavored with toasted rice, made in the smaller pot, the black iron one. On a little plate a dun scone flecked with jelly-looking ginger sits next to yellow eggs dotted with black pepper.

The light moves on from the roses, throws a shadow over the work table and its heaps of papers. I watch its progress from the breakfast table, fork in hand, leaving tea-colored rings on the Times Literary Supplement