Sometimes our whens grow bloated
And I miss the pinpricks of your upturned mouth
Popping the bulging bubblewrap balloon of minutes, countless
As atoms floating inside

And then: when our whens are
Skinny
The corners of yours and the curves of mine
Shape a helix
And time is gapteeth sealed shut and curtains
Of lips
Part to reveal pearlescent togetherness: we

Ever
So
Softly
Slink
Inch
Brinking on breaking
All these damn clocks in the house because skinny or elephantine
The whens cease to mean
Anything
Anything at all
Because time stands still

Originally published on Medium

The post Between Skinny Whens first appeared on Katya Davydova.

See, at around 8:42 each morning, give or take a million languid minutes due to the horrendous congestion, Larry greets your car’s undercarriage with a thunderous hello. His friend Margaret is farther down the road, and today graces you with a slackening of your usual steering-wheel-white-knuckling as you pass leisurely over her. That morning rush hour is really quite the opposite, both because you’re crawling and because your car has already been gasping and groaning for over 60 minutes.

At 6:53, when headlights stream in the opposite direction, you encounter Alhambro: stocky, mustachioed, surly. He’s the big nemesis, the one who makes your tires recoil so far back into their sockets that you swear that tomorrow, you’ll have to circumvent his booming salutation, if only for the sake of your car.

These potholes all begin to appear as characters in the quotidian scenes of your life.

The way you fall in love with a big city is just like you would with a face. All the scars, blemishes, bumps, growths.

The spurt of chin hair here — it’s that intrepid, dandy lion cleaving a concrete crack.

The still-pink mark above a left eyebrow in memory of a playground pole — it’s that indent in the stucco parking column where your car violently kissed it.

It’s all the pockmarks, the pores, filled in or hollowed out, pressure squeezing out the inner gunk from the plumbing below.

It’s the congestion you get as a head cold descends and the smog of the grimy streets doesn’t help. The congestion of your nasal cavities mirroring the ones on the city’s freeways, every human particle trying to move, to get out, but all are collectively stuck. We’re all stuck in traffic’s mucous membrane.

And so, as you get to know a face, waking up next to it cradled in the pillow each morning, a routine builds. You get to — and you joyously do — take in all the scars, and blemishes, and bumps, and growths. You see his face, her face, their faces, day in and day out. You look at all the people you love and all the people you miss, and you smile to yourself at how beautiful they are.

It’s the way Margo leaves you a few banana pancakes for breakfast because she was listening to that Jack Johnson tune this morning while you slumbered. The way Daniel’s eyes crinkle when he welcomes you into his circle with arms wide, enclosing you into warmth and friendship as laugh lines deepen on your faces. The way that Arielle and Jake, whom you’ve only met tonight, thread their limbs through yours stumbling home from the bar, singing We’re off to see the Wizard! on the yellow brick road that doesn’t seem so far-fetched in this bewitching hour.

You look at all these resplendent humans and at unsuspecting moments of gazing and memory, you see their own potholes. All the scars that wove the histories that are coursing through their veins. The stories. Their stories.

Through the routines of seeing these people — your people — you remember to be awake. When it’s a jungle in your apartment and the air outside is so polluted that the mountains hide, you go for a drive to escape for a little while.

You drive to go see Daniel, you drive to check in on Margo, and you’re once again stuck in the mucous membrane of city traffic. But as you trundle along, the Larrys and the Margarets and the Alhambros jostle you on the freeway, reminding you you’re still moving. Still going. Mental congestion dissipates as you get closer to your people.

These people. These potholes. They shake you awake. They get you unstuck.

And as you to fall in and fall in love with the scarred, beautiful faces around you, you fall in and fall in love with the scarred city streets. This is how you fall in love with a city. This is how you call it home.

The post Potholes and Falling In first appeared on Katya Davydova.

Every birthday, I have a tradition of posting shop at this coffee chain, writing a quarterly and yearly review of myself, and ordering the largest, most ludicrous hot beverage.

As someone who normally goes for a plain medium coffee, cream no sugar, a drink with as many names as a descendant of a royal family is a real treat.

It’s 9:30 a.m. I walk in, find my spot in a cozy chair, go up to the zoo-like counter, people clamoring for their morning caffeine much like myself, and order a “Coconutmilk Mocha Macchiato.”

Now, before I had driven to Starbucks, I checked the menu and painstakingly compared all the ingredients, nutrition facts, and pros and cons of each fancified drink I was considering. This sugar-bombed modern twist on coffee-with-milk stood out. I even had to Google what a macchiato was–and found it to be the perfect combination.

I walk up to the counter, trying to pronounce all the zigzaggy syllables to the poor barista. “May I please get a Coconutmilk Mocha Macchiato?” She asks to clarify my order, and I even whip out my Starbucks app and point to the drink. That one.

I scan my phone app, paying nothing since Starbucks is phenomenal and gives you a free drink on your birthday, and head back to my chair.

A few minutes go by, and I am so impressed with two things.

One, the baristas’ sanity in controlling the crowd and getting the right drink to the right lips and the sheer speed of processing; and two, the barista saying my name correctly.

This was already going to be a terrific day.

I grab my drink, ready to enjoy the once-a-year concoction, and sit down to write.

Almost two hours pass and I fling my head back to enjoy the last drops of the creamy creation, and check the label.

Two things stand out to me.

One, they had gotten the size wrong. (As a birthday glutton, I’d ordered a Venti–24 ounces of coffee and syrup.) No worries, I didn’t need those calories anyway.

And two, they’d gotten the order totally wrong! I didn’t realize what I’d been drinking (though, to be fair, I’d probably not have known the difference were it not for the printed label slapped on the side of my cup).

So we had ourselves a delicious little dilemma.

By hour two of writing, I’d been jonesing for another cuppa joe, because I am a coffee addict. But did I really want to rile up the wonderful Starbucks workers, when: one, I didn’t need more saccharine liquid coursing through my veins; and two, I didn’t want to be that woman who’d sipped her entire beverage and decided it was completely wrong?

I did not! Surely!

However, since it was my birthday and since I’d been pushing myself to speak out when things could or should be improved, I decided to try it out.

I waited for a lull in the customer line, walked up to a 20-something, curly-haired Nate, and explained the situation.

“So I realized I received the wrong order, and of course realized it after I’d drank it. Here’s what I had ordered [showed him my Starbucks app] and I got a caramel macchiato. It’s no worries since it was yummy, but I thought I’d…[mumble mumble].” Cue a trailing silence on my part.

At this point, I’d expected Nate to say, “WELL TOUGH LUCK, WOMAN. You already had your fancypants drink! Who do you think you are?!”

He probably had to deal with enough grumpy people already during his crack-of-dawn shift.

But instead, here’s what he did. He glanced at my phone, confirmed the order, and said, “No problem!” in the kindest, cheeriest voice I’d heard all morning.

And that completely made my day.

This type of no-questions-asked customer service blew me away–even in the age of the controversial “customer-is-always-right” mentality (to which I don’t necessarily subscribe; there are some pretty nasty customers out there who treat service people like dirt, and that makes my blood boil). The fact that Nate represented not only the Starbucks brand but also his personal brand of being a good human made me feel stellar–as both a customer and as a person. Now, as I sit here finishing my true Coconutmilk Mocha Macchiato, hopped up on too many grams of sugar and caffeine, I feel grateful.

Say what you want about the coffee giant. The people who work there, in my experience, tend to be just the right amount of sweet.

The post Quality Over Quality: A Starbucks Story first appeared on Katya Davydova.

I was running through suburbia — you know the kind: strip malls, traffic, cookie-cutter houses whose walls almost kiss, and a lot of pavement.

As my feet pounded on an overpass across a major highway, the river of cars below roared over the music in my headphones, an engulfing onslaught. Meanwhile, beneath me, the individuals in their hermetically-sealed plastic-metal boxes could just barely drown out the noise of the traffic surrounding them.

All these people, cars kiss-distance apart, yet no connection. It struck me as melancholic.

Running along, I was nearing the end of the overpass and stopped suddenly, mid-stride. Backpedaling, I retraced my steps back to the middle of the overpass, gazing at the rushing cars below, and began making rainbows with my hands. Back and forth, back and forth I waved.

How do we connect with strangers?

We do it with whimsy, with slightly breaking social norms we may feel confined to, with breaking the monotony of an afternoon commute.

As I stood there on that bridge, helicoptering my arms, a delicious joy bubbled up and out through my body. While 90% of the drivers and passengers below didn’t see me or didn’t wave, the few who did absolutely made my day. Here were two people, unknowingly thrust into the same space and time of existence by sheer chance, connecting over a universal symbol of ‘Hello.’

Hello, new friend. It’s nice to meet you, if only for a split second.

As worlds intersected over and over for mere moments, I couldn’t help but smile wider and wider. Grinning turned into laughter turned into pure, unadulterated joy. I was floating, effervescent, lifted by the smiles of strangers below. The suburbs suddenly didn’t feel so lonely.

How many times do we pass up an opportunity to connect with another human being? To look into their eyes as they pass by, instead of at the ground?

When our initial, ingrained impulse is to ‘stay in our lanes,’ perhaps it’s time to look up, and wave.

The post Waving Through Traffic first appeared on Katya Davydova.

Something that gives you the giggles, something that catches your eye and induces this radiant, wonder-like feeling?

Take a moment to pause and remember: Think back to when you were a kid and immerse yourself in the laughter of jumping amidst hundreds of bubbles you blew with your friends, or when you spiked that colorful beach ball so high up to the clouds, or when you were driving through the tail-end of a rainstorm and looked up to see the most magnificent rainbow.

That is joy.

While making my weekly sunset drive from DC to Charlottesville after a grad school weekend, I was introduced to the concept of the study of joy through a podcast. Based on Ingrid Fetell Lee’s research, I learned why we are so drawn to circular objects like beach balls and bubbles (since spheres are “safe shapes”), and why we like collections of tiny things so much (since the sum of parts is greater than the whole).

Have you ever seen or cuddled in a pile of puppies or kittens? Or run through a field of flowers?

That is joy.

And here is where joy is different from the oft-sought-after “happiness.” The podcast states that while many chase happiness, it is a long-term and often elusive concept. Joy, on the other hand, is tiny and immediate. It has nothing to do with acquiring things, or traveling to exotic places, or any other grandiose ideas, since joy is the act of noticing the here and now. It is simply being awake and open to letting the quotidian world amaze you.

For example, as I’m typing this at my favorite coffee shop, I just noticed the barista is wearing the same exact socks as I am! Why this is such a joy for me is because I chose those socks purposefully this morning, and because the barista and I had a lovely conversation when I was ordering my coffee earlier. Now, our worlds intersected once more with our shared affinity for a certain kind of sock, and that, to me, is joy. As soon as I noticed this little serendipity, I smiled deeply to myself.

So why should we care about joy?

Joy is additive, which means that the more of it you have in your life, the more it compounds and the more joyful you feel. I tried this on myself: after I listened to the podcast, I actually went looking for joy during my mundane drive. For example, I noticed how the drab winter tree branches made a curious hot-air-balloon shape against the orange sunset sky, or how the lights of the incoming traffic looked like a glowing yellow river in the distance. Keep in mind that this is a 2.5 hour drive I’ve made hundreds of times–yet I still noticed something new that time.

These teeny-tiny details of everyday life made me smile, which spread positive emotion, which made me happier, and which is also backed by science.

That night after I got home, I took a second to observe the droplets of water on my steamy bathroom mirror and follow their rivulets down the glass, and seeing myself in the reflection, wondered why I didn’t look for joy more often.

There, I learned that, just like daily practices and mediation, looking for joy makes one more prone to finding it, and that in turns adds a dollop of color to an otherwise busy, hectic life. It is the sheer benefit of noticing that helps me to slow down and revel in just how joyous a day–and lifetime–can be.

So, what is your daily joy?

It really is right there if you stop and pay attention.

The post Oh, Joy! first appeared on Katya Davydova.