Stain on my notebook ... And coffee in bed

Staying overnight at her place was the rarest of luxuries. It hadn’t happened many times. But the first time he did, he hadn’t slept too well, rubbing her shoulders distractedly every few minutes. And she’d slept curled in his arms with eyes that even when open spoke nothing but of secrets hidden safe.

Waking up early, he’d made coffee and taken it to her, willing her to wake up. And she did. The coffee sat undrunk on the table while he made love to her as if he hadn’t seen her for eons.



The other time, he’d waken up to find her missing in bed. With a panic that refused to be curbed, he’d almost leapt up to rush out looking for her. But she was in the same room, sitting on her armchair reading.

Noticing the movement, she'd looked at him over her book. And as if continuing a conversation that had been suspended, she’d read to him in clear tones words that rang true in the musky night from Musset.

“All men are untruthful, inconstant, false, chatterers, hypocritical, proud, cowardly, contemptible and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful, vain, inquisitive and depraved." She must have skipped a few lines for the pause was a thoughtful one. "But there is in the world a holy thing and sublime, and it is the union of two of these so imperfect and so dreadful beings.”

Pausing she’d looked at him through eyes softened by the sincerity of the words read. In her voice, proud and arrogant led by knowledge of acceptance, she'd read on.

“We are often deceived in our love; we are often wounded and often unhappy, but still we love, and when we are on the brink of the tomb we shall turn round, look back, and say to ourselves: I have often suffered, I have sometimes been deceived, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not an unreal being created by my pride and boredom.”

And with perfect knowledge of imperfect mankind and in their superiority of knowing and living life in terms that scorned the weakness by a name called love, they’d made love again.