This morning I woke up in Sedona Arizona before the Sun. I actually woke up at 12:45 PM, 1:38 AM, 2:25 AM, and 3:45 AM. When I saw that it was almost 4, I decided to get up but was on the fence about whether or not I should take a shower. My neck hurt and I wondered if my housemates were already up too. I thought about how long today would be and how I could change my mind after making the command decision not to try and change to an earlier flight. I had said I wasn’t going to shower and then when I was in the shower I thought about how my grandma always said it was “a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.” I suppose I could have tried to change my mind about the flight too. 

I didn’t. 

The stress of trying to return the rental car AND get my friends to their gate on time as promised seemed a stretch and I’d rather take the day slow and easy and not have to worry about rushing anywhere. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for rushing anywhere. To be honest, I haven’t had much patience for it all along. 

Somewhere amidst the rolling over in that uncomfortable basement bed I checked my email and found the highly anticipated form letter rejection email from Rattle. I submitted not one, but two batches of poems to their annual contest, the esteemed Rattle Prize, and though I knew getting a positive response was a long shot, I still had hope. I always have hope. 

It goes like this: Research and submit. Feel the rush of hope for a chance. Hope fades and I forget all about it. Weeks (and sometimes months) pass and whatever hope I had is reduced to data in a piece of documentation – a single cell of hope in a universe of spreadsheets. Then the rejection comes in and the data is updated, for historical and statistical purposes. The hope is remembered briefly, like a melancholy daydream, and is quickly replaced with a little pinprick of pain, poking at my confidence. 

Rinse and repeat. 

What a sham. Rattle. Pffffft! Whatever. 

Fast forward 3 hours, after I’ve dropped my Texas besties off at PHX and my neck is a giant knot and my stomach feels about the same, almost to the point of nausea. I smile and get out to hug them. We exchange a sad goodbye moment and then I get back in the rental car as they walk away. I’ve got 12 hours before my flight and no plan. I google “starbucks scottsdale.”

The streets in this town are not busy and I’m thankful for that. The Starbucks I find is a freestanding building and I am thankful for that too. But then I go in and it’s apparently the busiest Starbucks on the planet. God himself was waiting in line for his pumpkin spice latte. Good gravy! 

It probably didn’t help that I had to pee and there was a lock with a code on the restroom door. How terrible for the people who work there to stop what they are doing to walk around the corner to let customers into the restroom. Stupid. Good thing it wasn’t an emergency. 20 minutes later God gets his latte and mine is up too. I then sit at an available table in the middle of the bustle and try to fight through my pain by checking e-mail and updating my stupid submission spreadsheet and other tracking software. I can barely hold my head up. Everything feels terribly wrong and I wonder how I’m going to get through the next 11 hours. 

I really don’t like busy places and I need peace. It’s my last day of vacation and I’m finally alone again. I enjoyed hanging out with my girlfriends for the week, but after a while, I just need to re-center and recharge. And I can’t do that while sitting between the 8-top of excited bridesmaids and 3-top of polo-shirted, pre-tee-off bros. I decided to find somewhere else to be and leave. 

It’s my last day of vacation and if there’s one thing I allow myself to indulge in on vacation it’s food I don’t normally eat. I google “burger king.” 4 minutes away… perfect.

I roll up to the BK at about 8 AM and have been sitting here ever since. I ordered right away and enjoyed a delicious bacon, egg, and cheese crossandwich with hash browns and orange juice as I cracked my laptop back open to continue working on the spreadsheet/research I was trying to focus on at Starbucks. Then I checked my email again. I already have all the tabs I need to record more rejections. I immediately saw a new email in my inbox with the lead in “Thank you for sending us ….” 

I know where that goes. I cringe and click away to a different tab. “Not now.” I say to myself. 

It’s quiet here. There’ve been a handful of customers come and gone and one other person who appears to be here, passing the time in the AC with easy “pop” music the same as I am. The employees probably don’t care about me sitting here for an extended period of time and there’s no lock on the bathroom door. I was sitting in one booth and then moved to a different one that had an outlet under the table so I could plug in my laptop.

I finished what I was working on, finished my breakfast, and decided to read that email before moving on to the next thing (without a plan for what that next thing might be). The end of the sentence and paragraphs to follow were not what I expected: 

Thank you for sending us “Bun in the Oven, Three Poems .” Our editors and staff responded well to your piece, and we think our readers will too! We would like to publish it in the next issue of The Pinch. 

THE PINCH!!!!!!

I just sat there. I just sat there in disbelief. I reread it and got to the part that talked about the contract. I reread the first paragraph again and honest to the Universe, I started to cry. Right there (here) in the motherfucking Burger King in Scottsdale Arizona. I just let that swell of emotions rush through me and welled up with tears. Tears of joy and relief and disbelief and tears of irony. Irony over the rejection I received from Rattle when waking up this morning and then this… this incredulous acceptance.

I looked around and there was nobody to see me cry. I’m all alone here in my grief and my joy, and it’s perfectly fine. It’s perfectly perfect.

Suddenly I had the motivation to dig into the situation a little, to document and research and of course, respond to the message and acknowledge the acceptance. Then slowly as the minutes ticked by, I started to feel better too. Maybe it was the food and maybe it was the good news, but my stomach ache went away and the pain in my neck subsided. It’s so unexpected. 

After a little more work, I started to feel like I needed to switch gears and document this whole experience. Which takes us right up to this very moment.

One thousand, two hundred, thirty-four words later, my laptop is charged to 100%, I’ve made it to noon, and I’m feeling happy and also so sleepy.

When I had 12 hours, I had options. I could hunt for a massage, go to the botanical garden, or put in some effort to try and change to an earlier flight. But the the truth is that I didn’t want to “do” anything else. I just wanted to be alone, do some work, and maybe read a book.

Now, I’m thinking I might just go wait out the rest of the hours at the airport. First I need to get gas and return the rental car. Once the wheels are in motion, that’s it. 

Which means that’s it for this too. Thanks for hanging out with me at the BK this morning. It’s been good. Catch you on the flip side.

Peace and Love,
~Miss SugarCookie