he remembered the first time he had undressed her. so carefully, as if he was afraid he would break her, somehow. his fingers tracing her porcelain shoulders, nails digging ever so slightly into her skin as one hand crept, slowly, up the back of her neck, and the other found her spine.

she fell easily into his silences, and he enveloped her, intensely; and things were good, for a while, as such things are.
she once told him that he wrote like he made love. he only nodded his head slowly, flicked the end of his cigarette, and told her she was wrong. he made love like he wrote.

it was the dancing, in the end, that always got them into trouble, of course.

*

still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he turned to her one morning, and asked why.
she arched her eyebrows, in that particular way of hers, meaning etched in every crease, and asked him what on earth he was talking about.
why, he repeated. why us, why now? why like this?
why anything, she asked, shrugging her shoulders ever so slightly.
i haven't written anything, he said, suddenly. not since i first touched you. why.
should i know?
well, i don't know, he said, slipping another cigarette out. empty, now, almost. what i do know is- my silences refuse to turn back into sentences.
when there was anguish, there were always her arms, wrapped around him. 
i don't know, baba, she said, abandoning her two-step. i don't know where your syllables are hiding.
and he may have believed her, if they hadn't circled around and around each other, so often. the same old ground, the same old fears.
you act, he said. 
you act, and i'm supposed to write. but all we do . . . all we do is dance.

- its so erotic when your makeup runs -