That's the way it is ~ the focus shifts this to that:

We are different in that we do not.

We say this as if this were some great revelation as we pass

back and forth a shared cigarette in New York as if discussing

the meaning of life when really, we speak only of ourselves.

Admit.

Who thought it would ever go this far, this long, this this…

Not I, this much I know. You know. Does not what we just..

Does this not prove the point?

Re-zoom, refocus

Look, you'll see; that was you, that was me.

No longer we two children learning or playing;

so what's our excuse now, David?

No need of blush or hush or sotto voce and etc.

It is the way it is. That is all.

Zoom.

Remember our favorite tree?

The one in our orchard so ripe with pears?

Remember the coatroom?

That first time - so many times...

Where I lost my…. no, not earring!!! (she hits him, but lightly)

(they are like this, you see?).

Remember the games that we played –

our hand-slap rhyme and staring game;

those long, orchard kisses, how you fed me boysenberries then

sucked the flavor of my tongue and told me how

"curiously" it tasted of raspberries.

Re-zoom.

So now ( leans in, kisses her) she :

"tastes curiuosly and delicously" still of rasbperries

which is strange, puzzling: you just had half a cigarette ~

"you disgusting girl!" Laughs.

For the record, she addds, I never smoke, it was his bad influence).

He kisses her again … Zoom-out.

Zoom

To have seem them then: how he protected her. How gentle he was.

How they were always both mysteriously sticky-lipped,

how he called her "tart au meil"

and how he loved her small idiosyncasies;

that she wouldn't brush her hair

that he would to it for her, brush out the berrried stickiness;

her honey-fingered twistings.

Hours he spent every evening brushing our such knots.

Re-zoom.

She is still his tarte au meil.

It is all of the honey. It is the way she eats it.

How she tries to fob it off on him, holds the spoon out until he tastes.

How she utterly failed to understand his love of just looking at her.

Later, when they have tea, she will eat the honey clear from the jar

When they part, when they part, when they part:

she will be as sticky-lipped as ever,

hair falling from her bun in long silks, (note, not knotted not sticky)

but reminiscent yes of a girl he knew, he knows.

She so addicted to pears, to honey,

and only the girl of raspberry-flavored kisses.

Things change, nothing changes.

Some loves are forever.