"He's lying," she thought - but it was a thought unfinished, incomplete, as if waiting for the end of its own sentence. She had nothing to finish it with. She had no proof.
"I'm going to have to get out of here next," he said, and dragged on the dregs of the cigarette - his last cigarette. The last white circle of paper crisped into ash and the coal dropped off the singed filter. "There's nothing left of me. For us. Nothing left for tonight, anyway."
"I know," she said, fighting the catch that kept trying to well up in her throat as she spoke. "I know from experience. You've got a place to be, anywhere but with me."
He was irritated now. "We've talked and we've talked about this. I can't see why we bother - it does no good! It's as if the sun rolls over the edge and back up around the other side, and suddenly the whole thing's undiscussed again!"
Her face changed, but she was unaware of it.
He started. "Hey - it's okay, it's not like - "
Suddenly he was thrown backwards against the dirty brick of the wall, her hands and forearms behind his neck and head, her down jacket sleeves a pillow - his hair spread out upon it - her eyes an inch from his. A split second recognition. Then they kissed. It became a poem.
We taste like lakes of
writhing snakes
- cool washcloth,
on tormented heat -
a kiss that never ends,
that lingers on in mind
through days and weeks
All our sour goodbye kisses
holding on and latching on
final lungfuls underwater
desperate interlocking lunge
"do we really have to go?
will this be the last we see?"
- a kiss that never ends, until
it drags us back, to
endlessly
"Gah!" he pulled himself apart from her, broke containment - looked at her, helplessly, exasperated. "I love you. But I hate when you do that. You promised me you wouldn't do that anymore."
"I'm sorry," she lied. "I won't anymore."
"No more poem-kisses!" It was a question.
"No more poem-kisses," she breathed out, a wisp of smoke curling from her lips.
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