While staring at an innocent yellow wall,
I decide I want my first kiss back.
It was mine, and it was wasted
on a boy without a face.
I remember his gentle scheming
and how I’d believed in fairytales.
My precocious giggles, aimless chatter,
and wide-eyed, summer-night smiles
brought him over the fence with a
jump and a smirk, and then,
his lips were flat on mine.
When he was done and my lips
were smacked with a wet cool,
I opened my eyes to see that
the sky was still blackish-blue.
The birds slept soundly and
the air was possessed
with the slither-'ssh' of cars
and the muffled murmur of the
neighbourhood squawk-boxes.
Time had ambled along,
like a gypsy by the roadside,
and I was still standing stable.
My pink-lipped assailant laughed
lightly to my side, thinking he’d
bested me, perhaps even charmed me.
Yet, with that kiss, he’d undone it all,
and I could see him clearly, even with
a moon that hid nervously behind him.
His voodoo had left me, and I was
free from pins and sins.
His lips had been rough, and
his tongue was a cold, clammy,
flopping fish, flapping clumsily
inside my maidenly mouth.
White feathers floated
to the ground around me
while all the flowers
lowered their heads and sighed.
Disenchanted and flattened,
I struggled to understand
the fuss of all this.
The assault of tangled lips
had violated my whims and wishes
leaving me disheartened,
in need of an escape.
So I left him by the fence
holding his chafed presumptions,
and I went inside,
up to my bedroom
with the pinks and the whites
and quietly closed the door.
You can’t wash it off.
Cupidity died, and
there was no consolation.
That boy’s face became a
muddy, foggy blur, and his
name, in my mind, a four-letter word.
These many years later,
I’ve learned to stop time,
and the kiss is now
a language I’ve mastered.
Lights dance and music plays
and nothing feels cold and
heavy. It warms me.
With all the joyful pecks
and soul-kissing since,
I’d like the first one back.