Two chairs, a table, and a thousand bottles of wine.  Tea light candles give life to dancing shadows that hover and twirl in beat with the jazz that floats in from the terrace.  Friends and lovers gather in the extended cellar and their voices blend together, seeping into the brick to be guarded in silence by the pursed lips of mortar and stone.  I glance over the table and beyond your chair at the iron nameplates above the cluster of glass bottles—Spain, France, Italy, the Northwest.

But your chair is empty.  

You ought to be across this table from me, your dark eyes caressed by the heavy shadow of your lashes on your beautiful cheekbones.  There ought to be two crystal glasses side by side on the little round table and your knees should brush against mine as you rest your foot on the bar of my chair.  

But your chair is empty, cold and stark and your silence screams at me across the little table.  

I don´t know what to do with my hands since they can´t reach out and find yours.  I wish you were here with me.  Glancing again around the long room, everything reminds me of you.  You are the art, the décor, the cold metal and the warm light; you are a bottle of rare wine that cannot be classified by origin or color, taste or complexity.  The voices and the music and the wine on my tongue fade into vagueness as thoughts of you consume me.

Your place is on the ledge, on the two bricks that stand out from the others where a single bottle stands alone, proud and unique.  

6/05/10