Good Morning

She was like some secret word I spoke to make a doorway into a new world open in front of me. I woke one morning in that summer cottage to find her gone, only a warm absence on her side of the bed. I waited until that absence turned cold and she still did not come back. In the shadowed gloom of the curtained room, I saw her clothes lay where I had thrown them the night before as she stood watching me undress her, smiling down as my tongue trailed down her stomach and found her warm wet sweetness waiting.

Getting out of the bed, I stumbled across and pulled the curtains, blinking in the sudden strong summer morning light. I found myself blinking again, and then staring to see her sitting on the low branch of the tree at the bottom of the garden, naked and drinking coffee from a white mug, as she looked out towards the sea, visible over the field and cliff edge beyond the garden.

I was dressed and outside before I’d even realised I was doing it, slowly walking towards where she sat in the tree as though I was in a dream and any sudden movement would have tumbled me out of it and back to some ordinary mundane day.

She seemed to sense my footsteps in the dawn-wet grass and smiled with all the promise of that summer morning as she turned to see me and simply said ‘Good morning.’