Her eyes glower at me, trying to contort into condemnation:

"How dare you take the chicken-wings away, JC!"

"We finished them."

"To the bone!?!"

"Grissel and all," I say, nudging the half-filled glass of white wine at her while trying to re-spark the spliff in my lips.

Etc., etcetera:

And, yes! for sure! I'd forsake tobacco for a solid chance at kissing her for hours on-end. What fool wouldn't.

But, her glowering at me, flush with the reckless abandon at the sports bar, so … so chere; chère … cherecherécheré … and all sorts of fancy things like that … ;-)))) @}--,-- …

+ + +

It took quite a while that night traversing less than 10-meters up the block, draping her in my sport-coat … there being Turks and goat cheese and a lots of lost time with old friends; and, not enough of her usual pauses saying, "Go wash your hands JC! … go smoke outside. FUCK YOU JC!," and all that Jazz that I'm charmed by.

It was a homecoming, after all … implied, as it were.

Like: "AHHH! that!" she says when slaking the butter knife clean of the aged, artisanal cheese with one's lips. I hadn't noticed the honey in the jar earlier …

+ + +

In some past life, we had been working our way down the caldera of Santorini on a mule … who knows who was the mule or who had been the man that time, Agamemnon having gone off for stranger things than just getting-by: a man (or woman) and her mule.

+ + +

Sometimes I draw (illustrate) what makes me smile in awe. It's usually naked figures in some sort of rapture. Sometimes the gladness comes simply in humming along to whatever the Bluetooth is casting: and, sometimes (very rarely) I find the words to communicate that ineffable delight the abides and becomes more noticable in times of quite repose … like the kind I find in having met you and the joy I'm suffused with while in your company which sustains for a few days afterwards like the tone of a gong working it's way toward quiesence.