We kissed and our faces merged. When we pulled away, I took yours with me (transformed of course, because even when I am you, I am myself) and you took mine, and I thought, oh, what warm eyes I have!

You said, “We look very strange,” which was true but uninteresting. Better to think of how we were still the same, I said, how even through my lips the same words come out of your mouth, and how I hold your cheerful, chatting mouth silent just the same. Old habits, old silences; as you are no more silent with my dour jaws, I am no more talkative. You frowned and though the lines were mine the frown was yours. “You always argue,” you said, and I stayed quiet because I wanted to prove you wrong.

We kissed again and our faces merged. And when we pulled away, some of me was left in you, and some of you was left in me, and as you stood behind me at the mirror (your hand warm upon my wrist, your fingers spread over the curve of my belly, two faces growing from the same smooth neck) we were two strangers, beautifully strange, wonderfully strange, but still, somehow, tragically, the same.