Day in reverse

Sitting in the coffee shop by our house, the one we printed out tickets in the morning we were all going for our (fated) Christmas trip. The air outside is redolent with Fall. In here someone has a cinnamon tea nearby and the music is soul and electro. I'm reading and Marissa is sketching. We got here a little before five and its now 7:30.
The after work meeting crowd left and the punk rock art school baristas kneel out front smoking and killing time. There's a guy twisting a rubik's cube while he looks on at his companion's laptop. She's telling him about the best after-hours gay bars and how her girlfriend often wakes up next to conquests she catalogs based on dominant tattoos.
The high tinkle of the bells punctuates everyone's comings and goings.
Rubik's cube guy goes outside to make a phone call. His right pant leg is rolled up, emblem of his membership in the tribe of the fixie. The barista has decided that we've had enough doo-wop music, and puts on
some Gogol Bordello. My foot moves reflexively and I look up from my
phone. To everyone here I am normal but what is it with us- forever on
our phones- outside a crackhead skitters past, his hair ghastly in the
back light of an expensive European car's halogen-its operator and
passenger slipping into down at the heels Belltown's many high end
eateries. There are so many restaurants because the rent is low.
Commercial space opens everyday, the start-ups and nonprofits, tech
firms and hair salons supplying a gust of lunch business at the apex
of the increasingly darkening days. in the morning the doorways
blocked by bundles of shipping boxes and blotchy blankets. Humans are
in there.
How does one get to a point where not even a family member can offer
shelter. Shuddering in the cold I tread quietly towards the silhouette
statues that emerge from the mist just past six am. We huddle and drop
our mats splat zippers and keys loud in the too soon morning, and
begin to sprint blood flows and I feel the movement of great slabs of
thigh muscle as I grasp to pass my fellow exercise classmates. We
exchange conversation as we lunge, birds fishing in shallow bogs, our
heron legs up, out and down, over and over.
Thus goes a day in reverse in forward in Belltown