The smell of cheap tobacco had become my home. The cigarette dropped listlessly into the green glass ashtray. Uncanny how that thin finger could imbue dead leaves with such ennui.

Thunder erupted from beyond the kitchen door. Outside a large window, the swaying of limbs in summer air was barely perceptible as silhouette. Their shrouded prophecy of rain a stark contrast to the electric yellow of our lamp.

Thumbing the side of a ginny tumbler I thought of shutting the door. The pitter of drops had made a timpani of the glass. Yet there was something so refreshing about the damp expectation of storm that had sauntered through the darkened doorframe.

That and the black long haired cat that had made a bed of my wingtips kept me at my post. I pulled another Pall Mall from it’s green and white casket. Having lit it… I looked at her.

Her eyes rose from the sketchpad to meet mine. We were wordless.

Lightning struck, allowing me a glimpse of the yard beyond the door, and a brighter version of those blue orbs.

“Don’t do that.”

I searched my mind as to what she could mean.

“Do what?”

Her pen rose, directed at me, like a pistol.

“That!” A loud whisper shot into my mind.

I tilted my head and exhaled. My eyes remaining affixed to hers.

“That evil thing.”

“Look at a dork?”

She shook her head. “No, that bad…magic.”

I still wasn’t sure what she meant. Though it didn’t matter. An allegro wind had walked its way on breezy legs and placed a leaf on her shoulder.

I liked the delicate way her neck met that shoulder. That discarded bit of tree was the finest jewel she could have ornamented.

“Let’s go…”

The thunder had strengthened the rain.

“Out there…?”

Her answer was to rise and exit.

I sat for a brief spell with a blank mind. My shifting foot gently removed the furry leg warmer and I followed.

The rain was cool. I felt it hit my face and tasted it on my tongue.

The night sang in strange notes of ancient expectation. Mystic music carried by the odd punctuation of a beatless thunder that nonetheless spoke rhythm.

We began to dance. Whether her or I…I do not know.

We danced with abandon in worry-free ecstasy as skyborne cataclysm embraced our daring.

Everything held the freshness of a peach. Her face had become alabaster as a Grecian statue.

She spun and landed in my arms.

For the first time since I’d summoned her from my past, we kissed.

All that had led to this, that had led to our existence, to our presence here in the meter of some divinely witless symphony, blessing the union of clumsy lips with kisses of its own.

As we stood forever in the harried deadly calm.

P.S. Don’t actually dance in a thunderstorm. It’s dumb.