The Wineglass
What else could I say, defining beauty as I view you picking up a long-stemmed glass of red wine? Poise comes to mind, then elegance.
Red wined grace. And a naughty half-smile that says everything you won’t say out loud. I think you will, though.
I have these thoughts in between the seconds that pass as you lift the glass to your lips. Somehow our eyes never let go, clinging to each other the way the wine clings to the curve of the bowl. Even after you set it back on the table, the wine takes its time sliding down, leaving red ribbons where it’s been.
I look down just long enough to envy the way your dress caresses you, settling into the curve of your hips, then look back at you like my eyes never left. Your smirk tells me how quick I wasn’t.
What else could I say?
My eyes trace your silhouette and speak thoughts to you that taste like the wine, dark & slow & a little dangerous, the kind that gets better the longer you hold it. Time teaches wine its manners. It only teaches my thoughts how to misbehave.
I should have stopped at one glass, you could say, knowing how cautious I am.
But can you tell whether the trouble that waits will be the good kind of trouble or something just terrible in the end?
On a Friday too, the 13th. Where everything seems to be failing. And the conversations surrounding us shift from “Let’s go on a cruise” to “Did you see that tanker smash that cruise ship in New Orleans to smithereens?”
What’s more, the man at the next table turns his phone toward his wife. All flights have been pulled from the skies. The FAA hasn’t done that since 9/11. Someone at the bar says Microsoft is down, a true workplace blackout.
You laugh. “At least nobody can call me in on Monday.” Then you lift your glass like a toast to the end of the world.
Moments in history that will, naturally, be remembered with suspicion. It’s Friday the 13th, after all. I wanted to believe we’d left whatever doubt we came in with at the door.
What else could I say? We’ve found ourselves in the right place at the right time. Surely this madness has been perfectly aligned. Let the planes stay grounded and the ships go down. Of all the places to be stranded tonight, I got the seat across from you.
A part of me wishes my glass of wine was whiskey. But I have stopped drinking spirits, now that I think about it.
Would I still be able to keep my hand away from your thigh? It isn’t all the liquor. No. It’s you, distilled, the higher proof, aged in the dark between us, yet pleasantly smooth going down.
Outside, the world keeps coming apart. In here, you pull a rose from the vase on our table and hand it to me like a question.
Another day, perhaps the last, to pick the petals from the red-wined rose.
Do you love me?
My skepticism often leads me blind, & by the time the last petal falls, I’m asking myself something else entirely. Did I bleed or did I bloom?
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