Fine Thank You and How Was Your Day?

We were joking about shadow bodies, doppelgängers, 
our bodies that don't quite feel awake until they 
have washed their faces and drank at least a cup 
of strong dark coffee. My doppelgänger ordered 
a coffee that the student barista made behind 
the counter, but with nondairy milk because of 
lactose intolerance and because though I love 
coffee, too much sometimes trips up the acidity 
in my stomach. Yet I drink it all day long, I 
nurse my one cup of coffee and make it last, or 
my shadow self will make myself another cup at home 
later in the evening because oh god she just loves 
the smell of coffee. I've been thinking of the body 
as a kind of garden, luxuriant with texture and
scent, dotted with underground caves where fireflies
sequin the water. Not that garden in the first story  
of exile where a snake in the grass wasn't there 
to play but brought a non-multiple choice test and 
a loaded answer key. My body doesn't feel like its 
core is merely a leftover rib or an afterthought. 
So many mornings my body might feel like a mess 
of limbs and thinning hair, callused heels, creaking
knees. But I would rather be a constellation of lights
winking at the edge of the ceiling, festive beyond
the holidays— wouldn't you? In the Bolivian restaurant 
where the tamales are warm and the sauce is creamy 
with a hint of heat, my body sinks into the orange 
bucket seat and feels short as a child, but it knows 
it couldn't wait to get out of the office. Someone makes 
a joke or a pun. Can't even remember how exactly it went 
now— divot, diva, treble, trouble?— but enough to produce 
a grand cackle. Funny how little plates of food and a little 
drink of something nice with friends is so restorative, even 
in this little city by the coast where sometimes it snows 
but mostly it floods and likely you'd have to travel 
somewhere to ski down the bright, powdered sides 
of mountains and breathe in the cold, lacerating 
air that says Do you feel that, do your lungs and 
the rest of you remember when last you felt so alive?