Flicker

In my words you must stay.

You flicker in and out of existence on the chair across the round wooden table from me. The lone table and two chairs barely fit on the narrow deck at the back of the cafe, but I enjoy the relative privacy from the crowd inside.

The rain falls all around us, the overhang of the roof keeping us dry. The lush green undergrowth of the thick forest comes all the way up to the deck so that I could touch the rain washed leaves by just extending my arm. The canopy of tall pine trees diffuse what little of the late afternoon light makes it through the rain.

When you come into focus, I hand you the cappuccino I had gotten for you earlier. You tell me about your day. I listen, my mind drifting, distracted by the sound of the rain, by the movement of your unadorned neck as you speak, by the way your dark hair falls atop your bare shoulders, by the movement of your curves as you cross and uncross your legs to find a comfortable way to sit on the wood-slatted chair, by the light in your eyes as you talk to me.

I listen to your day but what I really want to do is to ask your night, 

    "How did you become the woman in my dream?, and 

    How did you make me the man that I seem? and, 

    Who wrote the stories that gave us our past?"

You flicker in and out of existence as the rain deepens in the fading light.