You still know me by name

Staring.
Again words blew about aimlessly,
like so many tumbleweeds, no further comment.
Only I kept chattering while we occupied the loveseat,
and you pillaged through an oversized purse in search of another cigarette.
You were thinking about tattoos, and heartbreak. Always heartbreak,
and occasionally disturbed by the question, how we will pay for our anxieties?
Our lungs will gradually resemble coal mines and the weary miners will go on strike.
At this your stomach grumbled, or from too many shots of whiskey—
we are frail animals, our cheeks discolored, and we are frightened by our own scent.

It must have been the gossip that stifled me.
The unavowable longings of two bodies complicated by details,
such as personalities, mixtape collections, properly sorting the recyclables, political views and stories about pet ownership:
the jibber-jabber of seduction will forever conspire against our best intentions
to produce loneliness.
So it hardly mattered that my fingers savoured the gentle relief of your spine, or carefully stroked your bangs, or how you unmistakably turned, leaning in for the kiss.
Yet for a moment there were only quivering lips, erratic graspings, and other squirrely maneuvers,
the whir of a ceiling fan
that reminded me of betraying her parents' trust in the basement long ago,
and my forgotten love for astronomy.
Maybe we both were pretending.