Deep swirls spun to blend as one color and then slowed back to the copper and khaki that made up my homemade caramel latté. I gazed into the mug and continued to stir it, though it had long become cold and I'd not taken one sip. I was wasting time with which I could've been cleaning, or reading, or sleeping-- but God knows I need more of that.
Mr. Coffee grumbled as it began to brew your second pot this dark and early morning. You're such a coffeeholic, I swear you probably pee the stuff out because there's just too much to filter. Yet you’re always as calm as old Lix, damn mutt ate the hibiscus again. He's just begging to go, I'm not sure he's even got enough energy left to last the rest of this year...do I even? But as I now stared through the hibiscus, having it on my mind, I realized it was unharmed. So Lix hadn't eaten it, must've been...a dream? No, I must just be so used to my plants dying to that old rag that I half expected it to have happened, and subconsciously convinced myself it had.
The subconscious tells us the oddest of things; you'll never know when it's lying to you. But you seem to have your head strong on your shoulders; do you even have a subconscious, or do you just live life confident in what you see?
Your spoon tapped lightly to the insides of your mug as you mixed in your extra cream-extra sugar, creating a steady rhythm that continued playing on in my ears even after you'd sat beside me at the counter. Only the warm touch of your lips to my cheek snapped me back from my coffee reverie.
Your eyes glowed this morning with the bliss I only wished I could find-- that which I only experienced when I was with you. But maybe you only experience it with me too? I mean, how could I know if your dark eyes-- so deep I can practically swim in them-- are just plain brown when I'm not around to see them? I wondered how my eyes looked to you; were they the same weak gray as I see them in the reflection of my spoon, or did they take on a cobalt glow in the exuberance I gain from your presence?
Steam rose is swirls from your drink, tickling your nose while you delicately sipped from your overlarge mug. Your mouth tightened at the corners as you swallowed the mouthful, painfully I assumed from what I read in your face. You've never given your coffee time to cool down before you bury your face in it. You also hadn't touched your hair yet this morning, it was all over the place and that cowlick in the back stuck straight up. Your choppy bangs fell in your eyes and danced with your long dark eyelashes when you blinked. I love your hair like that most; sometimes I wish you'd leave it like that or even style it that way on purpose. It makes those days when we skip work together even more enjoyable; simply sitting around the house the way we wake up, doing whatever our hearts please. It's been a while since we had a day like that; I'm sure you've noticed too.
You realized I was staring at you, and you smiled at me-- that smile that pulled me in the first and every time after. I quickly look away, like a girl in junior high looking away from her crush-to-end-all-crushes. That smile, your eyes, the love that emanates from you when we're together; it overwhelms me every time I look at you, making my chest swell ‘til it's difficult to breathe as my heart drums a rapid and erratic tempo. Infatuation; a split second and I return to normal, I can look at your face and smile back, convincing you I'm alright-- because in those moments that I am compelled to look away, I want nothing more than to stare at you. Into you.
Light crept through the window, flowing across the sink and countertop, the floor and rug, the table, spoons, mugs, your hands and eventually your face. We sit, the silence filling our ears while we have our wordless conversation. Your long eyelashes slowly close and open to your thoughts, I wish I knew what they knew.
Past your face was the refrigerator, black in my unfocused eyes with the pictures of our lives. Without centering in on them I knew what each one was. There was my first birthday party, my fat red cheeks coated with sticky icing; you at bat for a little league game sometime when you were ten, wearing a dark green jersey, the number 19 on your back, unseen in the picture; our third date, the fishing trip with your family when we were in high school, my sophomore year and your senior. You stood behind me, your arms wrapped around to hold my hands, helping me to handle the pole correctly; such a cliché and cheesy move, but I did it wrong on purpose. There was also a picture of our wedding, of you embracing me for that life locking kiss; a picture of our niece, Abbey, playing in the sand on her third birthday two years ago; a picture of my patents, lost a year after our wedding in a plane crash. There was an ultrasound photo of what would have been our first child, our son. I still tear up at the thought of William Parker Doyle; he would have been three this May...
Your coffee finished, you rose to mix another cup. The room became more yellow than blue as the summer morning's light painted the walls around us. I chewed my bottom lip, a bad habit of mine that causes me a terrible need for Chap Stick in the winters, as you know. It's what I do when I don't know what to say, whether I'm nervous or just have no ideas for a conversation, I fill my silence with the distraction of lip chewing; it relaxes me.
Your spoon clanged to the floor with a humming chime, scaring me out of my seat, startled so that I bit down on my lip, cutting the soft skin inside my mouth. I tasted metallic on my tongue, a taste like an old spoon or that stray paperclip one chews in boredom at the office. I poked the wound with the tip of my tongue as you bent down to retrieve the piece of silverware that had caused such a hectic second in our lives. The wound hardly stung and would be gone as fast as it had come, just like that moment and any other in time. A split second can be the difference; the difference between silence and sound, healthy skin and a cut, awake and unconscious, life and death.
"Sorry," you mumbled, finally breaking our voiceless conversation with your smooth voice. You tossed the soiled spoon into the sink and took the overfilled mug of coffee back to your seat beside me. "How’d you sleep?"
I knew you'd ask that question, as you had every morning the past few weeks; I hadn't bothered to ask why you felt the need to ask, we both knew I wasn't sleeping well, but I answered on the contrary.
"Fine." I lied. I avoided looking at you, knowing you could read the pain in my eyes; I hated lying to you, but it was better leaving the truth in silence. That's probably why you hate the quiet so much; you've always had to have some sort of background noise. I have to agree that silence scares me too, because it holds the truth.
As these thoughts ran through my head, you crossed the kitchen and switched on our little countertop radio. The CD I'd put in while doing dishes last night blared from the speakers. You weren't home so I had my own little party with the soap and sponge. The soap was a better dancer. I listened to the words flowing toward me and allowed them to soak through my skin and my hair and fill me with the light of their meaning. This was a very refreshing morning.
You rounded the island counter and took my right hand into your left and placed your own right hand on my waist, lifting me from my seat. We slowly spun around the kitchen a few times and I freed my hand from your grip and placed it on your shoulder with its partner. I rested my head into your neck, breathed in the sweet scent of your skin. Your chin prickled on my cheek and I buried my face deeper into your warmth. I drowned myself in you, let myself slip into you and swim through you in swirls of ecstasy and absolute reverence. We were no longer dancing, just standing, holding each other in a profound innocence that only love can create.
I live for moments like these, and I could live in one if them for the rest of my life, without sleep or food, I wouldn't need any when I felt like that. If only they really could last forever.
♫Say it's true, I'll never ask for anyone but you ♫
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