I saw a cloud the color of old honey today.
I was on my balcony with the second coffee I never finish, the one that goes cold while I stare at the river and pretend I'm working. The light in Lisbon does this thing in late afternoon where it turns gold and lazy and slightly apologetic, like it knows it's showing off. And there, over the rooftops, this one cloud — thick, low, amber-edged — looked exactly like the honey my grandmother used to bring back in a jar that never quite closed. I thought: I want to tell you about it. Which is strange, because we've only met, what, three times? Four, if we count the evening you stood in the doorway of the gallery and didn't come in.
I counted it anyway. I'm an illustrator; I count details for a living.
Here is what I know about you so far: you take your coffee without sugar, you laugh at things a half-second before everyone else, and when you look at a painting you tilt your head like you're listening to it. That last one undid me a little. I don't usually notice hands, but I noticed yours.
In my studio today I was working on a spread of a girl walking through a city made of paper. Everything was going fine until I caught myself giving her your shoulders. I erased them. Then I drew them again. I am not proud of this, but I am also not sorry.
My friend says I live in a Russian city that exists only in stories — Baku by the Caspian, where the wind smells of salt and tea and everyone argues about whose grandmother made the best dolma. In English, I live here, where the light is the whole point and the pastries are criminal. Both are true. I am a person made of two kitchens and one sketchbook, and I have decided not to apologize for that either.
So. The cloud is gone now. The coffee is cold, as predicted. There's a film I want to see on Thursday, the kind that's mostly silence and a window, and I keep imagining what you'd whisper during the slow parts. I made too much breakfast this morning — late, of course, the good kind, eggs and thick bread and apricot jam the color of that cloud — and I ate it alone and thought about how you'd steal the crust off my plate.
Tell me something small. Not the important things — those can wait, I like waiting. Something small: what did the sky look like where you were today? Did you notice it at all? I'll draw whatever you answer, I think. That's not a threat. It's barely even a promise.
But it's the closest thing to one I've got.