Still Renewing The Permit

Each visit demands a new stamp; each stamp, a new office; each office, a new queue. The permit is no longer a document. It is a relationship — long-term, exhausting, and impossible to leave.

It was 9pm. The pasta was cleared. And then came the words 'un cappuccino', and a nation's culinary soul cracked clean down the middle. The barista made it. He will never forgive it.