I saw a cloud today the color of old honey, and I thought of you.
It hung over the river for a long time, low and slow, like it had nowhere to be. I was sitting on my balcony with my second coffee, the one I never plan but always make, and the light went soft and gold and the whole city looked like a painting someone hadn't finished yet. Lisbon does that in the late afternoon — it turns everything into something you want to touch.
I sketched the cloud. Badly. I'm an illustrator, so I have no excuse, but some things are too lovely to draw properly. You just have to sit there and let them happen to you.
I kept thinking about yesterday, and how you said my name like you were tasting it. That happens to me now — I hear a word, and it turns into you. A bakery sign. A song playing through an open window. The way the tram rattles past and I look up, half expecting you to be leaning out of it.
You asked me once what I notice first in a person. I said the hands. That was true, and also a lie, because I noticed your hands the entire breakfast. How you tore the bread. How you turned the cup. How you held a napkin like it didn't matter, when everything about the morning mattered to me. I remember you take your coffee black in the morning and sweet after three. I remember you don't like too much sun on your face. I remember you laughed at a joke I made that wasn't even that good, and I have been trying to write better jokes ever since.
It's embarrassing, in a nice way. The way a city becomes a place you miss someone in.
I went out later — walked down to the water with my sketchbook, which I never actually use, it's mostly an excuse to stand still. There was a woman selling figs. A man singing something sad in a language I don't know. A dog sleeping on a warm step like the whole world had agreed to be gentle with it for one hour. These are the small things I'd tell you about, and you'd listen, and you'd ask a question that made them bigger.
That's the thing. You ask questions like you're keeping them. Most people ask like they're throwing them away.
I want to take you to the market on Saturday. Not the tourist one — the real one, early, when everything smells like oranges and cold stone. I want to buy you something you'll pretend not to need, and I want to watch you eat it standing up, because that's the only correct way.
I want a lot of things, and most of them are small. That's how you should be suspicious of me. My grand plans are just late breakfasts and someone to look at clouds with.
The honey cloud is gone now. The sky is doing that violet thing it does before dark, and I'm still on the balcony, and I just remembered I never told you the second thing I notice in people.
I'll tell you. But you have to come find me first.