Notes from Sydney

Sydney is like an overly ripe fruit: sweet, hot, sticky, and slightly overwhelming. Women and their children drink juice and coffee and own pompous little dogs that bark, wheeze, and dribble. People are unequivocally busy and beautiful.

At the café, a woman sits alone staring pleasantly and blankly into the dank Sydney air. She chews, in silence, her enormous breakfast roll. She has a rosy tint in her cheeks that wobbles as she eats and a smile that sits tilted upward while she thinks of something happy. Swallowing, slow and considered, she carefully flattens her napkin on the table before taking a relaxed and satisfied breath, lifting herself upwards and striding promptly away without paying.