I watch your lips move and half-listen to the words that suspend themselves in time, and dangle like stars in the space between us. My mind is frenzied with the passing of time, knowing somewhere inside that I won’t see you again soon. I smile back at you with the mention of old times while I study your movements, those gestures that still seem like a part of my own character even though they belong to you. Your hands are nonetheless familiar to me. It is as if they have never stopped caressing the quiet parts of my body or touching my skin in the dead of night, seeking safety in the midst a bad dream. It has been years, but your veins still curve in the same directions sketching purple designs on your delicate, pale skin. I have them memorized. How bittersweet this moment is. I wonder, briefly, if I am still beautiful, if you look upon me and imagine my body silver under the moonlight as I now envision you? Not long ago our hands would have met across this table, our lips pressed hard against the warmth of knowing we were loved. But now we struggle hard against what seems like second nature, and I fiddle with the napkin instead, pretending to be amused with shapes I fold to distract myself from thinking. We talk about our partners as if we have never woken in the morning sunlight side by side or watched the sun dance across the curves of entangled flesh, or slept inside the glisten and the glimmer of nakedness under open windows and soft breezes. I attempt to fight off the discomfort with another fabricated laugh…it travels half way up my throat only to be swallowed back down to my stomach where it churns and grumbles noisily. I answer your questions, fabricating answers that in no way resemble what wanders through the gray spaces of my mind. I am an actress, on stage pretending I don’t love you, pretending I don’t ache to feel your body curved around my own as we dream our dreams; connected by time, and space, and the illusion that love keeps two people in rhythm rather than throwing them grossly off cue, rendering them useless except to stumble over the toes of one another? Who made me believe that anyway? It’s obviously a misconception, for here we are together, yet more apart than we ever imagined we could be. I glance at your watch. Seems time has swallowed up the moment and we reach for our coats to begin the journey home, only this time the road home is less familiar, and the destination is simply one more thing we no longer have in common.