this is how our little act started

the first time where i selfishly sat on the edge of your bed at the end of a night that had started with an unspoken understanding that it would be finishing like this and so we could safely draw out each moment to breaking until late, draw it out until now, a few kisses into the proceedings, during one of those silent pauses of examination you started to unbutton your shirt and i sat back and watched you by bedlamp and you watching me undressed and you did it so beautifully and self-consciously but fearlessly until clothes piled on your shoes and naked you pushed me still dressed back onto the bed and pinned me and kissed me again and your back was under my hands

i still like the way you undress
it never became a mock striptease
you never bring in tv postures
or dialogue stolen from the movies

it is an act created never to be transmitted
an independence
we keep it that way
by changing it
each time we play it
in ways only we can detect