Sips

He stirred the colors into his coffee until they went from the color of her eyes to the color of her skin in the height of a summer being bronzed in a tan.

The windows were spotted with condensation, the outside air already humid...the air still cold in his room.  High above the city where he was a stranger.

His travel was a broken wheel, lumbering across the country from place to place, an uneven balance to his hours and time zones...never enough sleep, never enough time.  He sipped from the warm cup, trying to figure out what hour it was where she was sleeping...or maybe awake.

There were times when it was just an ache...other times when it was just a bruise.  He felt plucked.  Pulled away.  Time for them was measured in seconds...rarely hours.  Flip the hour glass over once...that's all we have.  Each time like a perfect eclipse...they aligned, sun and moon and then it was past.

The beauty of such passing is she never changed...she was this constant light.  She was in the full grip of his heart and his many, many thoughts of her.  They widened his day, brightened up the bedside...a slice of art that he could conjure up.  She was mystery and knowledge.  Salt and sweet.  A contradiction at times...impossible to read.  But gentle.  Soft.  Feminine.

He saw her so infrequently, interacted with her occasionally.  Yet as he took these tiny sips of her they both satiated him and made her more addictive.

He finished the last of his coffee, tasting the tiny bits of sugar at the bottom of his cup and he remembered that they reminded him of her.