A Stolen Moment

Light is diffusing.

Sometimes even a tad confusing.  He could always see her in the dark, could always tell where she was by the sound of her voice...the colors of her tone were evident even in the blackest room...slight drawls, a sorta-southern undertone that heightened when she was drinking...or tired.

He had heard that voice murmured against his lips...smashed even...deep in her throat, and glowing.  Embers of some heat behind her, from within...he couldn't tell.  Wouldn't try.  Rather, he soaked it in and felt it like some distant sound that perhaps only he could hear.

He loved when the lights turned out and he stood for a few moments as his eyes adjusted, his visual-purples, his rods and cones all assimilating to the sudden blackness.

Here she would say...

In this tenuous game of Marco-Polo he would drift slightly...waiting for her to merely say it again.  She never said "here" a second time...rather the next word was always...

Closer

He imagined the faint outline of her, the contours and the pillow landscape.  She never would extend an arm or a hand...rather that stayed next to her...she was comfortable...it was his role to join her, not disrupt.


As he got nearer he could detect the slightest scents of her...lotions...tiny whiffs...finally understanding what drew bees to flowers...

what hummingbirds imagined in fleeting seconds before nectar...

perhaps primal, reptilian cells in his brain and the sweet scent of her cloying his mind...he could almost see her, more like a presence than a shape.  It was completely black in the room but he knew exactly where she was laying.

She was the sun...the rest of it just orbiting around her...gravitational pulls and floating freely until he got too close...

The room always seemed warmer with proximity...as he put his weight upon the bed and she knew he was close....she shifted slightly, and at that moment an arm might arise...and he would trace it back to her, where the shoulder was tilted and know that her neck was exquisitely close, and her lips very near from there.



Some mornings, in the diffused light, as she lay peaceful and filled with sleep he stood briefly in the doorway while the grays were lightening and the morning sun was the color of butter...

the artistry of her was in full bloom, the quiets of her face and her tones were mute, and she was there simply as countenance...simply as angles and geometry...

He knew why bees were drawn to flowers, why men painted and sculpted and he knew that in this stolen moment it would paint yet another million reasons of why he couldn't forget her.