
Menu Meditation
There’s a particular silence in cafés just before ordering. That moment when the cold air from outside still clings to your coat, and all attention narrows to laminated options and the quiet negotiations of hunger.
This was taken on a grey afternoon in Brussels. A couple sits across from each other, each reading their own menu as if studying for an exam. No phones. No talking. Just decisions to be made: sweet or savoury, warm or cold, this or that. It’s a familiar ritual, yet rarely observed this closely.
What drew me in wasn’t the scene’s drama—there was none—but its quietness. The soft concentration on their faces, the gentle lean into the paper, the scattered menus on the table like maps of some shared but separate journey.
In the background, the café folds around them: vintage signage, plush interiors, the staircase curving like a memory of old Europe. The place carries weight, but doesn’t boast. It simply allows people to pause.
Some photographs are loud. This one whispered.

