Perfect morning breaks to black coffee and journal, leaves the thick coarseness of a coloring book—penpoint etches, leaving innermost thoughts in an inky wake, footprints on a beach at dawn. Privacy unnecessary, the scrawl is indecipherable to all, including author. Written not to be read, but to be released; brain, balls, bile and ire escape through rollerball’s path. Even the spaces between loop and dot hold meaning lost as soon as it is recorded.
Narrow feetsteps approach, bare toes on clay tile, smell of shampoo fills nostril before contact. I thrill at the anticipation of touch, continuing my purge, aching to see what will come: a squeeze of a buttock, a palm across a nipple, a wet finger in an ear? Intimacy without serious distraction, a quiet “I’m here,” a hint to how much better my morning will be once my exercise is complete.
It is a lingering press of lip to shoulder. Not a kiss, a luscious mouth resting on the ridge of muscle that eventually leads to my written word. Breath raising the hairs on my skin, one eye peering to page where my thoughts become focus from their cerebral scatter, the other hiding behind my neck, butterfly lashes tickling with each blink. Close enough to observe every invisible hair, each pore and follicle.
She inhales the smell of sleep from my skin, the cold drip of her bathed curls trickles shoulder blade, kissed away from my waist by a thirsty navel as she presses into me. Pillow lips from shoulder to spine, a silent peck before resuming journey to the brewing carafe of liquid miracle, a shadow of her touch still warm and dark behind me.
Second cup poured from pot, she slinks to table, drapes robe behind thigh, her silky knee disturbs the hair on my own. She cuts eyes briefly while puckering to sip through the steam, estimating the time in column inches that separates us. She stares forward, but I know this game. My scribble quickens as I approach page end.
She rises from table, half-supped and smirking, and as she reaches kitchen door, she hears the click of the pen and the book slam shut. She runs but not too fast, her squeal smothered by a hungry mouth and another glorious day has begun.