New Orleans

I sit in my car, sipping a Café Au Lait, wondering what New Orleans feels like at this very moment. The emotions that run through me are not particular, just an overall feeling of awe and abode washing over me. The warm bittersweet fluid fills my mouth, flooding my tender, kinetic taste buds, before seeping down my throat and imbuing my sated stomach the way the warm thick, humid air of New Orleans snakes around the body of unsuspecting victims and deflowers their virginal inexperience of its unique heat. Ah, that air, what would it feel like as it pushes into my pores, moving through my epidermis, up to my brain and clouding all reasonable thought? Would it make the unconventional lights of Bourbon Street seem even more acute? Would it make the strings of the guitars, basses, and cellos of the dexterous jazz musicians vibrate with more passion and endurance?

I would sit outside the small, historical Café du Monde, under the green awning in my swanky black dress and savvy black shoes with a large-rimmed, black hat and white gloves covering my milky, pale skin. I would peer over the top of my cat-eye sunglasses at the tourists in their khaki shorts and tank tops, their cameras adorningly draped around their necks. With Faust in one hand, and my coffee in the other I mix in perfectly with the wealthy éminence grises of first street-–the core of the Garden District. The Café Au Lait is sweeter in New Orleans, thicker. It isn't served in a paper cup, but a porcelain one from which the steam rises from the rim and disperses in the air, leaving its scent lingering at my nostrils. Word by word and sip by sip I absorb the preternatural meaning of the text.

The last sip of the coffee fills my mouth, its aroma absorbed my willing nostrils, and I am back in my car, sitting . . . waiting for nothing to happen once again. The dreams of New Orleans leave me like wreckage on the shore after the gusts of the storm blew them from safety. I fear I shall never see its tree lined streets, its French cafes, or its grand avenues again.