Thursday

We knew where we wanted to be come the first rays of dawn. But we tarried a while, enjoying the slow, spiralling dance towards one another.
It began with coffee. Stale, over-creamed, under roasted coffee in a cafe where everybody around us held nothing but empty hope and dirty cups in their hands. I didn’t even know how she liked her coffee. But I knew I wanted to know. I wanted to know down to the amount of time she likes to set it aside to brew and steam and fill her with the promise of its aroma. I watched her order. The slow bloom of her smile as she met the waitress’ eyes, the slight shift in her shoulders when she turned back towards me. The widening of her smile and how she leaned across to play with the napkin on my side of the table, her fingers tracing patterns around my left hand.
She spoke of things in a way that made them instantly sensual and vibrant. The way she described this city of hers that I was new to. The music in her car and how each song was picked so that even traffic couldn’t shake loose her happiness. She laughed, and it was a sound that echoed and reverberated in the deepest, quietest parts of me. It seemed to reach across and demand an answer from my throat, like a flamenco dancer in her last pose, drinking in her well-deserved applause.
Our coffee came and we sipped. I watched her ask for sugar-free sweetener. I watched her open it precisely with her artist’s fingers and empty it into her cup. Watched her stir it in a smooth, metered stroke. Then she spied me watching and that smile came out again, and that shrug, and she winked and licked the spoon.
I didn’t care my coffee tasted like New York tap water drunk from an old coffee can. I was here, across from her, and the city didn’t seem uncaring. At least for tonight. At least until the sun came up and banished us, us the poets of the nighttime sky.