Adagio

Adagio

I watch her from across the room. She is reading by the glow of soft lamp light, music a bare whisper in the air. The music would distract me, but she says it complements the poetry she must make tangible by holding the book.

"It fills me," she says, and doesn't expect me to understand what she finds in her private world. It's enough that she feels it.

She doesn't know I'm watching. She is finding romance in words written by strangers. If I could write a poem, I would do it for her, but I can't. I tried once, and was so appalled by my own ineptness I wadded it and tossed it away, ashamed for her to read something so inadequate.

I wonder if she knows how much I love her. God knows I'm not the romantic she is, and can't remember the last time I told her I love her, but I do. This soft creature has brought a sweetness to my life I never would have known. She gives without knowing.

Pangs of contrition strike somewhere below my heart. Do I give in return? Is it enough? I wonder what she sees in me besides a man who can't verbalize what she inspires within him. Surely, she feels it in my touch, sees it in telling glances.

I hope she does.

Right now, she seems so far away. The need to close useless distance between us overwhelms me, and I cross the room to kneel by her chair.

"Dance with me."

"To classical music?" is her surprised response. She smiles as she releases the book and we rise together, warm bodies close and heedless of any tempo but our own.

I will say the words she'll want to hear before we drift into sleep. For now, speech is swallowed by the depth of my own feeling. It grows in adagio, a slow spiral of all the words of all the poets she has ever read, a rising crescendo of all the music ever felt.

It fills me.