Café Abandon

It isn’t an empty airport. Not a bus terminal in the small hours of the morning. True, it is a liminal space. A threshold. A place between here and there. But it is not empty. And it is certainly not quiet. Perhaps this space is best described as a somewhere between a dive bar and nightclub. Or better yet, both. It is filled with trepidation and excitement for the journey ahead, despair for those who failed, and…something else.

Those who have returned, who found courage under the deepest challenge of their life and abandoned what was most dear to them, sit at the bar and stare ahead, unsure of what they have lost, know not what they feel. Not the sad ones talking with the bartender, or maybe a barstool away, waxing poetic about heartbreak or loss or some other mundane sadness. These are the ones staring into their watered-down whiskey, neither a smile nor frown upon their face. The ones you don’t talk to. The ones you don’t dare talk to.

They’re here too.

And all the while the band plays on. For, at Café Abandon, the music never stops.

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