Slivers

I study her departure.

I drink from her glass.

She was here...she was just here...and in her absence I feel such great ache.

The light from a May is still descending...between the columns of curtains there is a sliver.  It is enough to cascade her in black and white...it is a soothing color,  a warming one.  Her outline.  It is soft focused...it is Kodachrome...a brief flashbulb for my eyes to register...she is beside me...she is with me.  Until she is not.

I sip from her glass.

Her lips were recently here...I can almost taste the warmth of them.  The slight soft crush of them.  Against the glass I share a piece of mine that were recently against hers.  The glass is nowhere close...but if broken and in shards it would cut mine and would remind me of the bee-sting of her departure.

The room has the air of her.  It has her presence.  Her reminiscence.  The lingering notes of her.  The oxygen exhaled...sometimes in a tiny outburst.  When she was against me.  There is a sliver of her in the air...hesitant, almost...like a ghost.

But not a haunting.  Rather a comfort.

A reminder.

Like a tiny minuscule sliver from a piece of wood.  Embedded.  She is embedded in my mind.  A welcome thorn.  Penetrating.  Peculiar.

Drawing no blood when inserted....but rather a simple brush upon.  A simple intersection.   A delight actually.

When the day is still deciding to be between the sliver of an afternoon and an evening...she is with me.  And soon the darkness wins and she is gone.

But like that sliver in the skin she remains...and I rub it for comfort.  For reminders.  For the next time.