Morning comes, and I keep paying for her in questions.

Most of my mornings exist between the inspiration of black coffee daybreaks and her name.  It brings me comfort to whisper it, both to reassure myself that I still have a voice and to break the silence of sunrises and memories. In that shattered quiet, I trace the mouth of my coffee cup with my finger and the swell of her hips with my mind.

These times call me to pose my singular enigmas to the dawn.  They don’t really merit her time.  I know the answers don’t exist. I know that even if they did, they wouldn’t be valuable to anyone else sharing the sunlight.  I still ask, just like I still tally the cost of each penny sweet word of my eulogy with coffee stain hash marks.  Certain habits become talismans; I think I keep wearing them for their outdated style more than any hope of function.

There is wonderment in those moments though. In the juxtaposition of that golden present with the bruised colored moments of the past all held in the dark arms of a capricious future. It is immense and it is finite. The tension is exquisite and it feels so beautiful. And it ends. It ends because everything ends. Magic moments like this always make me think of endings. Endings and her. She taught me how beautiful they are. Just as she taught me the joy of unexpected questions, the faith found in quiet, and the redeeming grace of cold, dark ocean waves. She was lovely and nuanced like that, and her nuances animated the poetry of her as she moved through my life.

When the rays of dawn have coalesced into the full light of day and it’s warm enough for me to move again, I pick up my mug of no longer steaming inspiration and smile. She never let coffee or me get cold. I miss her. Endings are beautiful and they are sad. And some types of sad just seep deep into your bones and into the places behind your eyes making it so that you feel everything that you see and you see everything through the prism of her.

There are no laurels granted for the extra miles to nowhere. There’s no credit given for wasted time. The true cost of everything dear and valuable is knowing it will be lost and then having to watch it twinkle in the silence of your memory. The trick, I guess, is finding a way to live with both its pain and its joy. And sometimes having a hard time differentiating the two. 

I feel my days running short. I’m not afraid of the ending. She taught me that. I do find myself wanting to extend these days though, stretch them as far as I can. Not because my life has much value as it is, an old man, his sunrises, his coffee, and his memories. It’s because those memories are of her. Her nuances still live within me and they feel too beautiful to allow to slip from this world. But they will.