Some lesser-known identities of a counter, however you define it, recognizing the dangers of slipping into the full absurdist guerrilla art territory of #notmakingsense.

1. Platform for performing dark fucking magic, as Alice Sola Kim calls it—a holy surface every knife gently pierces, calling forth the shame every woman has swallowed in silence. Here, prep becomes prophecy as you boil ginger ale into Gen Z trauma, create a spam account to escape the performance of the main—only to realize the spam also demands a persona. You draft a spam-spam where even your breakdowns demand good lighting (do not look away, the counter is watching).
2. Altar of counteracted intimacy—if the counter’s height is right, one person can sit on it while the other kneels or stands or flirts. Listen closely, IKEA instruction manuals are gently reminding you to wipe down the surface eventually.
3. Stage where you can eat that up and leave no crumbs, where consumption becomes devotion, a language you speak fluently—you scroll, you snack, you style, you prove you’re more than your mouthfuls, more than your midday crises, more than your well-timed BeReal’s.
4. Temple for unread philosophy, where you lay open Heidegger and Kierkegaard and Foucault and Nietzsche like sacrificial texts, the counter now witnessing a performance of intellect, a cozy façade conjured out of your God complex in 8th grade English class, for anyone who might ask, “Have you read Irigaray? Lorde? Cixous? Or do women not count if they didn’t write in aphorisms?” Maybe read some texts that Pinterest doesn’t talk about before it’s too late. 
5. Bed for caramelized onions, because time and heat have never betrayed you. As you stir with reverence, as air thickens with sweetness, you remember how each translucent ribbon that once made you cry has now become your Victorian-era lover returning from war, and the realization kicks in—oh, the onions missed you too.
6. Shrine to poetic refusal—a rotting peach softens, darkens, collapses in on itself, leaking indulgent nectar and sultry secrets onto the all-consuming marble, because it knows you will not throw it out; you will let it decay so that beauty can be witnessed in all its phases, and mold will serve as proof of your honesty, a private refusal to perform order!
7. Diagnostic test for your mental state, based entirely on the number of used mugs currently occupying the surface—one mug is normal; two mugs, contemplative; three and a wine glass, a hint that you sobbed while folding laundry; more than five, a sign the home café is simply alive and thriving.
8. Sculpture titled “Still Life with Coping Mechanisms,” a rebellion against minimalist decor that glorifies the empty and the beige of it all. A true counter holds: something you thought you’ve lost but found again, something you thought you’ve lost and have never been able to find, something you didn’t even realize was lost but might never be unearthed, and oh WAIT did you just find your keys?!
9. 2 a.m. confessional, where you cry into a cold bowl of ramen and realize adulting is not as aesthetic as all these girlblogging posts make it sound. And you miss your mom. 
10. Laptop easel for inbox paralysis, used only when you have to check your emails but truly cannot bring yourself to reply. The counter becomes a loop of half-written thoughts, an erasure poem that promises “attached is the”—with nothing attached. 
11. Runway for performative adulthood, like Butler’s idea of performative femininity but in the context of anyone in their early 20’s—cheap wine you bought in Aix, gigantic OuiOui™ baguette mumbling in your tote bag, McDonald’s you ate in Paris, and fake candles that will theatrically theoretically thematically set off the fire alarm any day.
12. Temporary charging station for your life on low battery mode, ft. your phone at 2%, your laptop at 9%, your earphones at 4%, and your dasein at -31%. When your earbuds chirp “Battery sufficiently charged” like an uncertified life coach, you nod back like, alright queen, my turn now.
13. Mini stage for all five stages of grief and every seven-second identity crisis, where you change your nail polish because the color no longer speaks to you, where you Google “how to be a writer,” where you cut your bangs with kitchen scissors, and where you discard all those light roast coffee beans you never liked—all in a bored frenzy.
14. Museum gift shop without the museum, whatever that means, an overpriced bookmark that says “Carpe Diem” in Comic Sans, a capitalist afterthought so over-the-top it becomes the countertop.

An actual surface, a flat rectangle, a plain slab of wood or stone or laminate that’s genuinely useful, maybe nothing more and nothing less. And yet, from somewhere, a voice says, “What on earth is she yapping about?” You ignore it; you’re making toast.