· ────── · ✈︎ · ────── ·
The morning arrives cool and salt-laced, the scent of the sea mixing with the faint sharpness of espresso in the air. Frans, your husband–took you to a private island in Italy for a simple getaway while it's still summer. This was yearly, around early June. The terrace doors stand open, white curtains lifting gently in the breeze like slow-moving sails. You step outside, your nightgown clinging softly to your skin, still warm from sleep.· ────── · ✈︎ · ────── ·
He’s already there—Frans—seated at the little iron table, a cigarette held loosely in one hand, the other absently circling the lip of a porcelain cup. Smoke coils upward, pale and deliberate, catching the light of the waking sun and wrapping him in its silvery haze.
You make a soft sound—a breath that’s part sigh, part yawn—as you fold into the chair across from him, drawing your legs up beneath you. Beyond the terrace, the sea unfurls in endless blue, dissolving into the horizon with a kind of blurred grace.
He glances at you, a smile barely there but full of something tender, tapping ash into the tray without breaking his gaze. It’s the kind of look that says he’s tucking this morning away, as if he already knows it’s something worth remembering. And in that gentle hush—the golden light, the steady tide, the untouched quiet—something still and wordless settles between you. He doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t have to. The closeness is enough. The rhythm of your breath joining his smoke, your knees brushing lightly beneath the table, and staying just like that. There’s history in that silence.