Quaker's Oats and Cinnamon

The morning broke like a rifle shot, echoing and pinging, churning the air into a tattered mess. The alms man sat beneath the Seder’s awning, his alms-cap between his legs, the sun scorching a hole in the top of his head. Today was the other-day, the one that fell somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow. ‘Most people are cowards, shameless cowards’ he said to himself. He remembered his grandmamma sifting oats with a wooden spoon she kept in a drawer beside the windowsill, the smell of Quaker’s oats and cinnamon quaffing the air, granddad sitting in his swayback chair, the teat of his pipe tightening the frame of his jaw. Tomorrow morning he will awaken from a restless sleep, place his feet on the floor next to his bed and begin at the beginning again. It’s all in the way you repeat yesterday, the other-day, the one that comes before tomorrow (a wee larval cock is what he called it, a wee fucking cockleshell cock).