Papaya Sorbet

She’s always been a Saturday, even when it was ten past seven on a Sunday night with Thursday’s leftovers on the stove, clogged up with all the typical gloomy shit associated with the day before Monday.

She’s that kind of day that’s always been a cut above the rest of the week, prancing around the calendar year with a spring to her step, like she knows she’s better, but never felt the need to gloat out loud.

I would’ve found more common grounds with God if he pointed Saturday as his. Maybe that’s why I’m not a practicing believer.

I’m glad he chose Friday, instead; that just meant it was hers for the taking.

She’s the only good thing’s that’s happened to me and Beirut since the August explosion.

Everyone knows this city’s a dying charm.

It isn’t the 60’s anymore. There’s no longer any fairytale operating behind the scenes.

It’s a broken metropolis unwillingly tiptoeing around remission just so we can keep going.

If you look past all the crap lying on the surface, you’ll just find more crap underneath. People just hang on to pretty thoughts and prettier words because it helps them sleep at night.

It certainly helped me.

This booby-trapped concrete jungle had all of us reeling long before it self-imploded two years ago; but even after it devastated everyone’s days, my sweet Saturday seemed to sway a bit to the left and a bit to the right, but never turned upside down like Wednesday or Friday.

It’s like she kept her papaya sunrays safe for when we’d eventually meet. She remained pleasant, even with all the trauma tangled up around her; she stayed true to her nature, perpetually glittering.
Proud to a fault, my Saturday saw the need to stick out like an irritating thorn in a field of black roses. For once, everyone wanted to get pricked by a thorn. At least, it wasn’t the usual dose of corn-fed, processed happiness, or whatever we indulge ourselves with these days. She was a sigh of relief.
The truth of the matter is, she’s always been there for us, for me, even when we were trying to race through her hours.

She never had a timer attached to her ankles like the other days. You weren’t forced to contemplate whatever you’re still doing in Beirut, not with my Saturday. Not around her.

For that, she simply got rid of her ankles for our sake. It just took me a while to see it.

Even when God tried to shove it down our collective throat, my Saturday persevered, like Prometheus challenging the pantheon.

If He created Sunday to rest, my Saturday had to mean something exceedingly good to all of us nine-to-five hardworking mules.

Even when I was caught dipping my toes in a puddle of self-loathing, wickedly so on a metaphorically sunny Saturday, she’d try her mightiest to fend them off, like a lioness defending her litter from a clan of depression-hungry hyenas.

Rather than scold me by taking the sun away, she’d compel it to up its shine for my own good fortunes.

I never really noticed how forcefully good she was, until my final days in Beirut. I’d be resentfully sitting at the office, contemplating my shit-striken assignments, and there she’d be, unknowingly looking at me with her warmth, even when it was Tuesday.

I picked up this small ritual a year back. It wasn’t anything grandiose, but it gave me an extended sense of calm during a very tense time in my life.

It was just a cup of coffee under a forgiving sun on a laid-back Saturday.

She’s so much like that to me.

A breath of fresh air, even when we’re ways off any grove.

It’s as if that frame of mind seeped out through the clouds and filtered its way into my coffee, giving way to a metaphoric back-burner.

My Saturday was right. I couldn’t stop my problems from simmering in my head, but that didn’t mean I had to stare at them as they bubbled away.

I know her wonders aren’t exclusive to my unpredictable whims, but I wish they were.

The world deserves to see her glow, maybe bask in it every once in a while.