In quiet room, Annie read by light of showing sunrise, golden as it broke, and enrichment of aura from lamp of soft-white glow that, near, illuminated self and page before muting into oneness with room and sun as it dispelled into room beyond.
Outside, Annie looked on the shadows of trees silhouetted in the dawn, the color of street and lawns beneath, and the slow pass of beginning traffic as the daily exodus of masses from homes—to jobs and professions maybe they loved, or maybe they didn’t; to pay for the life and home to which, after, they returned at night—began.
Annie read from the book, but the story did not engage. Resting still—in view of morning scene, its light and quiet and simple solace in beginning actions that erased stillness but still shone peace—as minds will often do, she created another story.
In the scene of room, she imagined him there, sense of presence near as he read too, holding book equally unengaging. She imagined his eyes, stare and soft smile over page, and her own returned. From mutual disinterest to stories that weren’t theirs, she imagined beginning to a counter and made writing of one’s own.
She imagined his movement, form in the light and shadow of early day light, a warmth as his presence neared, the feel of his breath over ear and side of neck, touch brushing fall of hair softly to side; the beginnings of a touch, then heat and supple sense of lips on open skin, deepening of kiss, focus of sense, then movement and matching of her—lips to his, head turned in meeting over shoulder, the fall of his hands lower in hold as kiss and sensing stayed.
She closed her eyes, breathing deep, warming in thought and the strengthening light of sun in morning rise.
Annie closed the book, and thought-sensing, opened eyes to stare upon empty chair where thought began—a seat as equally ideal and inviting as the one in which she rested for morning thoughts, reads, musings, and dawn-affections.
She rested in a stillness, room holding with sounds of her own slow breaths and soft scratch-friction of tires to asphalt and low motor drones as neighborhood emptied in beginning of a daily exodus.
She gazed outward on world’s shaping scene, color painting into silhouette shadows of the trees and the roofs and fronts of homes opposite to her own.
She held in the quiet. She held in the peace thinking nothing on the story in book that was not hers. In quiet and peace she warmed smiling in knowledge that when most in need of story to know, feel, and believe: one’s spirit writes its own.