Polished and new
I got some new boots today. Polished and new. I tend to spend a little time with new shoes just rubbing a little extra polish into them. Get them gleaming with a deeper, duller shine.
I started work a few weeks ago, I’m just getting the hang of it now. I’m working (ostensibly) at a printmaker. In some ways even though this isn’t exactly the work I was trained for, there is this nice contentment in inking, feeding the paper through, pressing down once, twice. Quiet, harmonious work.
Willard helps me a fair bit still. He’s painstaking and patient and serious. We’re all very quiet until Paul gets here. Paul’s the owner of the shop, very tall and kind of gangly with these glasses that perch on his nose and a misshapen jumper always 
. He likes a bit of music while we work, so he usually puts on something eclectic. Today it was a collection of studies by Czerny (or so he said, jumping up onto the counter which had his computer excitedly).
Willard and I silently composing texts as if they were tunes and printing them off to the sound of solo piano cascading up and down almost in time to Paul’s keyboard and mouse. Paul humming away as a lazy fly floated through the damp air and out again. My mind drifting along as if down a gentle river…
We printed a good portion of our latest order by that evening. Paul went out for drinks, Willard hopped on his bicycle and swiftly darted down Brunswick Street, home and I?
I slowly wandered down the right alleyway home, loudly slammed the flywire door and the oak one, checked my email, tickled Leta, white cat, under the chin, fed her tuna and… slumped back into my chair, exhausted.
After a shower I was, once again
polished
and new.
