He Murmured Bhavana Kunnath, 2021 He sat there. You son of divine eternity, You son of Dronacharya1, He sat there on a cold noon in January, letting the crisp air attempt to tousle his hair out of its perfect hibernation. The sun yawned at its zenith and shone down upon him, warming the bench beneath him but doing little to warm the man himself. He scratched his perfect, faded beard, wiped a bit of dust off of his cashmere turtleneck, and let his hand fall down into the wine-colored suede of his suit jacket. He turned his face upwards, attempting to soak in the precious sunlight while he still could, knowing that Surya2 would not let his rays fall on him for long.
a regular here, or anywhere else for that matter. He was somewhat out of place in the harsh lighting of the hipster overhead lamps with his eyes that spoke of poetic tragedy. Though the sophistication—the inexplicable and subtle coldness—with which he moved and spoke suggested that he was infinitely older, he seemed to be about her age. She was beginning to think she knew him somehow, as though the few minutes she spent carefully searching his face while he waited for coffee had been enough for her to decipher something about him. She had developed a certain fondness for the mysterious figure that drifted in at all odd hours of the day, so she did not think much of it when her new regular asked to wait outside on this sunny, albeit bleak, day.
He turned his idle eyes back to the cofBut he was not her regular. He was a fee shop in front of him, fixing his empty vagabond slave to circumstances beyond gaze on the young barista flithis volition. He smiled stiffly, “He was a vagabond tering around from one table ruefully, at the glass panes before slave to circumstances to another behind the pristine him and leaned back against the beyond his volition.” bench. He did not question the glass walls. He wondered if she had been put off by his force that compelled him to wait odd request to wait outside until his oroutside that day (he had simply stopped der was ready or if she had forgotten him questioning these forces altogether), but altogether. whatever force it was he was grateful for the opportunity to observe the café in its She hadn’t forgotten; she couldn’t. He entirety. had been a recurring figure at the shop for a week now and she had begun to The barista was a child in his eyes. She think of him as regular—only he was not knew him no better than the old man
