Upon Waking

How do your eyes catch me
those sleepy wee hours?
I stir you
as a watercolor caricature,
picking through our dismembered socks
and shirts that still linger
with the taste
of your cologne.
Where my cup wobbles
slopping joe,
staining my true name
(gentle lady)
in the thinly veined blue-white graphics.

As you feign sleep
wrapped in a half-hazard bundle,
mount cotton -
your hand caught across
my pillow, a furry leg there,
and washed by the impending
dawn headlights
of this approaching Saturday morning,
there is a moment,
where the loss of my words
paint themselves
across the goldenrod walls
in three question marks.
(I...love...you.)