In the dead of the night

She was so socially active it astounded him at times. She would throw her hair, arch her back and laugh whole heartedly at the jokes. She would be interested in what everyone had to say, a kind word and sympathetic advise following every confesion. She would down the shots and smoke the cigarettes, she would dance and taste the music. The cloths were spotless, the attitude was fresh. Sweet irony sometimes tainted her words. So interesting, so smart, so beautiful.

But his fascination had nothing to do with that outgoing side of her. It was in the dead of the night that his sight was offered the show it craved.

Wrapped in a sheat, thinking he was sleeping off their exhaustion, she would open the window and light one of her long cigarettes. Her mind on things he’d never know, her skin speaking a language he will never understand. She would watch the stars, she would feel the ground, she would hear the velvet texture of the air. Words would never exit her smoke drowned lips. Her eyes, green pools, would allude to depths unexplored. Those were the moments she spent with her secrets, with her scars… The woman smoking at that window was one he didn’t know. She was not social, she was not smiling. She was the present. Appreciating how the nicotine helped her think better, her mask off, her features unguarded but unrevealing.

He would go back to sleep, street lights caressing his eyelids.