Walking to meet a friend. It’s Sunday. The streets are empty. The alleys are empty. The entryways are empty. The usual scenery doesn’t exist. If god can take a day of rest and workers get weekends off, why can’t people of the street?

I see an empty doorway with a ripped bag, a piece of tissue paper and a bottle of HP Sauce. Who doesn’t like HP Sauce?

I’m looking for a hipster little coffee joint where I’m meeting a friend. The place is everything I don’t like and everything I do like at the same time. I don’t want to embrace my hipster roots, mostly because I was one of the firsts and the hipsters you see around you are perversions of what my friends and I represented. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

I text my friend, tell her it’s a big city with small spaces and I’m a big rural Indian. I don’t really fit in and I actually don’t fit most spaces and seats. She laughs at my silliness. I feel like I don’t fit in, like I stick out, but the truth is people don’t care enough to pay attention to me. I’m living in vain like everyone else. By the time she arrives the place has cleared out so it seems like I was exaggerating. Story of my life. I’m used to it.

We buy some expensive coffee. It tastes good, I don’t know if it tastes as good as the cost would imply, but who am I kidding, we’re paying for atmosphere and the opportunity to share this tiny cramped closet space with other like-minded hipsters. So it goes.

I tell her about my find as we’re walking to the school. I have a thing I’m doing in a bit and I know they have comfortable seats there. As we pass by the empty space I tell her that I don’t even know if the bottle is full or not.

I show her my find of the day. She’s fascinated as well. I notice the bottle has been moved and I can see that it’s been opened and is empty too.

Look at that, I say, someone or something moved it. It is empty.

I wonder if this is a rare moment of emptiness in a crowded lonely place, or if it’s always empty and merely doesn’t appear so most of the time.

With the absolute emptiness of all things in mind we continue walking. We can’t just stand there, it’s a Sunday after all and this space needs to be empty.