Fragrance of Dark Coffee

     There is a man and he is sitting at the window thinking about the night and how the night itself is thinking about love. They are both stagnant and gazing at each other; one with a million, million eyes. The man smokes a cheap cigarette as a red candle burns slowly down to the base of its holder. The night is cold in its observation - how it watches the man who watches each passing car, each tensed up person half-running to escape the rain. He breathes out a plume of smoke that the night could imagine were clouds. Clouds like its clouds that move so aimlessly as if lost. The man plays some jazz from a second-hand radio and sets down at his desk, replacing cigarette with pen; trying to craft some new phrase about how the night is his mother out at sea. The night yawns into the wind as it lulls itself to sleep.