He stubbed his cigarette out between surprisingly agile fingers, skewing the ash into the tray. The smoke threaded through his fingers and she watched from half-closed eyes, as she hated the habit. He slid the ashtray to the edge of the table, where the wind caught the smoke and kept it away from her brown hair. Children were laughing blocks away from the eatery. She smiled, the first time for her in minutes, but for him seemed hours.

�You probably think this is all about me.�

He paused, nodded, fingers laced together.

�It is.�

She smiled, affirming, and looked to her right just in time to see love come into phase and furiously bloom all around them, enfolding deep and semi-permanent and making her toes curl, making his eyes drop their guard and dance over her finally.

Satellites reported a burst of red from that section of the world, but the binary stream to different feeds didn�t speak anything of passion, didn�t find any way to curl around a kiss. Computers hummed and digested, picked apart. Even then, the man lying in bed with poems pacing restlessly from temple to temple, each nerve a private worship to her touch. For her, she never washed too hard in the shower, for fear that the deep red blush could leave her skin and body. With restless eyes she would fear seeing this red spin with the water down the drain, between her toes. It never did.

He watched a side of her form from the bed, the slight arch of her back reflecting water, as if some unfinished sentence so liquid in delivery. She felt his eyes and it felt like home.