It was around eight in the morning and I had gone down to my local breakfast joint in Jakarta. I usually had the same dish, hot noodles mixed with whatever the woman of the house would put in it. As long as it was spicy, as long as I would sweat. It was the way for me in the tropics. Every morning ‘Lana’s’ would join me. I did not know her real name, only her ‘working name’. She would wipe my forehead and give me a kiss on the cheek. I would begin my day delighted in our conversation. Two worlds at opposite ends in a safe place. At ‘Lala’s’ she could, along with the other sweet girls from the area, have a quiet breakfast. Lala was a large and smiling Muslim woman, who judged no one and whom no one argued with. She had set upon herself the mission of being kind to the women whom had ‘lost their purpose’ as she put it.

What will happen

When he is gone

Nothing can happen that is not supposed to happen

I can’t take it

And then I am on it again

And what wasn’t supposed to happen

Happens

Lana was 22 and she would make about a 10 dollars a day, sometimes more. She always looked after herself she said and she was good at what she did. She offered me to try for myself and each time I thought about it until the next morning where I would take her word for it. She wanted to study medicine and live in Europe or Australia. That was her dream. And to find a man that she could love. She told me that every morning.

You are My Morning Love.