Sundays in the Fall

 I remember eyes that perfectly matched the color of her coffee...the color of the James River after a heavy rain...such dark quietness...her blink like the shutter flash of a camera and you were now a portrait in her mind...hung tidily on some wall where she might let you venture.

On a day of worship that is what he did...he fell to his knees and held her above him, his kiss along her thighs, the top above her knees, he felt her hands on his shoulders, her hands in his hair...murmuring her name as he nuzzled her skin...worshipping her on this Sunday.

The sun was late and low these days, the hours of daylight growing smaller, melting like the way sugar melts in water, making the day parts that much sweeter.  She moved around on the porch the same way a leaf would fall adrift from its limb, to and fro, and finally alighting upon him, butterfly soft.  Lips as warm as noon in an Indian Summer, each time rekindling him.  Reminding him.  She spoke in a quiet throat, him straining a little to hear, to catch each careful word...nodding in response.  Pulling her into him, like the envelopment of flannel...she covered him, cloaked him.  He was the barren ground and she was the maple leaves, the beautiful yellow, orange and reds that fell gently...her bareness even more beautiful than when fully clothed, stark and perfect against the dying light of the short afternoon.

She arrived each time as if daybreak...time only started once she walked in the door.  And in her departure, a void like space where no gravity existed and time was stuck blinking and unmoving.  As if winter was an extra frozen month, and slowly warmed but only enough to melt snow into dark gray piles.  A day in noir, a black and white photo of nothing.  That was time away from her.

But not yet...

For now, she was close...close enough to feel like a furnace.  But warming from the inside rather than from the outside...because she was still inside of him, as well as the outside.  On this day of worship he lingered and slowly let fingers become intertwined, praying for the hours to slow down and for the daylight to still burn...just as she did beside him.