The odor inside the cafe was bittersweet. Of course, the aroma of coffee and muffins and whatever else was cooking on the kettle added a sweet texture to the air, but the stink from the rain outside ruined the smell. 

I sat back, touched my coat pocket, and felt nothing. I shook my head. I quit smoking three months ago. Why hadn’t I remembered that? The guy across from me was smoking a long cigar, which I forgot to add to my list of things that made this cafe smell like a bittersweet haven beneath the palms in Cartagena. I remembered a cafe just like this one, actually.

About a year ago, I lived in the Dominican Republic, and at the time I still smoked, but the aroma in the cafes there was much more bitter. Personally, I enjoyed the bitterness, it added the only punch of reality in the whole city of Santo Domingo. But Cartagena was just the perfect mix. I loved it here. 

Earth was bittersweet. Just like this cafe. Everyone seemed to just be so self-absorbed, or would duck and cover at the crackling sound of politicians and other people who thought they had any real power. 

I knew what real power was. I knew what it was capable of. I was of a different kind of species, from a place so far away from Earth that you couldn’t see my home star in the sky. Sometimes I would watch people walk by the cafe, thinking of the time when Earth had no humans. A time when Earth did not have trees or animals. I thought of how it was when I was put on Earth and told to watch the planet grow. It had grown much over the millions of years, and then, the humans came along. I never thought they would take control of the planet as fast as the many different types of species before them, but they did. I had begun to act like them, eating too much and drinking too much, but I remembered that I wasn’t sent to Earth to do that. Now, I watch humans destroy Earth in their own ways. And in a way, it was as bitter as it got. 

Everyone was controlled by fear or the hope for something better. Some were controlled by primal desires, and the urge to gorge themselves with vices. 

But every once in a while, every slight once in a while, there would be a tiny crack of light beneath the shutters. A tiny piece of it. And it made me forget about how much of a mess the planet was in. That sweetness, added to the disgusting bitterness of the rest of the world, made Earth bittersweet to me. 

The rain drenched the street near the cafe, and off in the distance, I could see the tiny flicker of light from the coastal lighthouse amongst the drooping mist of rainfall. Beyond the lighthouse, I could barely see a thing. But I knew there was a big giant body of water out there. Larger than the eye could see. Expanding east and west and north and south. A never-ending mania of peace and tranquility, albeit with the normal violent tides and currents. But the real ocean. It was like space. It was like my home.

But I had to finish my work here first. I had to work in the bittersweetness and lick the tasteless ice off of my popsicle before tasting its sweetness. I had to learn. It was bittersweet. Just like the cafe here in Cartagena amongst the falling sheets of rain.