I go early on Sunday’s to write. I usually get a drink and a lot of time I get the deviled eggs.

Everything was mostly fine. I finished the eggs and was eating the puddle of cheese and bacon left on the place. Taking a bite, I set the fork down on the plate, engrossed in the article was reading on Grav errors (one of my pages is down, that still isn’t solved). After a minute, reach for my fork.

It was gone.

That moment when the wind is taken from your day. The very essence of why you are in the place you choose to be relies on simple details of partials. My plate was gone.

I stood up, unsure how I should proceed. She probably thought I was done. She assumed that the chevre and siracha bacon crumbs were garnish, not the soul of the plate itself. Sure enough, I notified the bartender and she brought out the errant waitress. Blinking, four, maybe five times, she only repeated what I already knew. “There were no eggs on that place.”

Flustered, I could only respond with the inane, “But I was eating the cheese.”

“I can get another. I can fix this,” she declared.

I nodded, still out of sorts. How? I wanted to ask. I had finished the eggs. Would there be another whole plate? Would I be forced to eat another meal only to get to the delayed epiphany?

That is when she brought me the bowl of cheese.

A single finger confirmed that this was indeed the cheese. I could only stare at the bowl. Where were the carefully sprinkled chives? The artfully place bacon bits? There was more cheese in this dish than Pepsi in my cup.

Defeated, I brought the cheese to the bartender. “I don’t know what to do with this,” I said.

She offered me a new set of eggs. I agreed, unsure I should. I had finished my eggs after all. Other place of eggs. A new pepsi. An hour wasted.

The day feels shattered.