Across the Room

Leaning over the coffee bean cabinet, 15 silvery chrome knobs, fastened to the plexiglass trap doors of each bin,  ask to be opened, she can't resist lifting one, her eyes decend into the chocolate brown beans as she breaths in the fragrance of the roasted mix.  Behind her back, fingertips pinch a white muffin bag and a black cell phone.  She’s ready to dip into the bag for a bite or push of the buttons to answer a call. 

In the corner the roaster sits, no other piece of machinery has this indentity, a combination cement mixer, oven, turn table, all in one.  Out of the burlap bag printed Brazil, green beans are scooped into the cone on top, sliding into the heating chamber for roasting.  Like a front end loaded washing machine, each bean tumbles to a deep roasted dark brown. Moments before burnt the attendant lifts a large silver ball knob, allowing the baked beans to cascade onto a spinning round table to cool.   The fine edge where the beans still green, to one burnt, can be reached if the roaster, the man handling the machine, doesn’t use all of his senses and experience to get it right.  This shop depends on his proficiency. Is the shops personality brought out by the flavor of the bean or the other constructs, two rooms, the tables, the glass windows out to the street, the individuals sitting, the girls pushing buttons on the cash register or the coffee pouring in the black and white ceramic cup sitting on the table next to me.  Not so much here, do you find the drinks that have five parts to describe what you get.  For me it’s just Sumatra, Kenya, Brazil or other exotic locations that gets me my drink.

This place has a reason to be here,  everyone keeps coming back for the good.  Just to spend moments here, rather than any place else. 

Like the color of a pearl you get lost in the skin between her shoulders, down the depression of her cleavage.  Over her left shoulder, light creates shadows on the construction of her chest.  Without touching, you imagine your lips on her smoothness, that first touch of the spot where her neck rises from the cliff of her shoulder causing the dip of her chin to stop its reaction.  Traversing the terrain from one precipice to the other she reacts by ending it or basking in the caress of each light sensation that hits the unplayed notes of this area.  Why does she present herself like this, if not to be played.  The tickles of her hair hanging down, subtle temperature changes all pluck nerves exposed.  Consciously, she’s unaware of all the music being played on her, blocked by the writing in her notebook.  To be the unknown light or shadow, stealing each touch without her realizing one bit of change.  Light waves reach out to me; each gradient shade penetrates the back of my cornea, stimulating a past where I physically touched this area.  No one here knows my theivery, all are concentrating on their screens, paper, or book.  Her right hand reaches over to pull up the edge of her sweater but by the time her leg is tuck beneath her, the sweaters gravity sneaks down.  The downward pointing symmetry is disrupted by the off balance of the left leg and the right hand writing.  An inch or two over the edge of the slope down to her deltoid, fabric doesn’t stick to the velvet layer of skin.  Straps of age don’t cling to any of this young angel.  Demarcation of cream and cotton knit are only inches from mounds accentuated at the tip.  Sliding down the slope of her right shoulder to the left is so steep you’d miss so much on the descent to the floor.  Fighting the rationality of concealment she sifts the edge, but over and over, her body flexes to what it wants, tipping to the air and light.  You can hear it calling," set me free, let me out of this fabric."  If she had a choice her body would say, “Nothing should touch me." Someone in her life said no you can do that.

I had a time, I said you could.  You don’t have to hide, and everyone else agreed, she let it out.  That time, everyone would like to.  For yourself is one thing, but for another is special.  Revealing portions of you no one else has seen.  I knew the pleasure of her pleasure.  All those reaction, what it makes her feel like.  Even if she had it again she would never have it again for the first time.  Image of this moment is captured inside my camera and in these words.