No one has ever asked me if I wanted a kiss. Maybe it seems trivial, and maybe I would have laughed in younger years at this exact offering. But now, I’m older, and I’ve sampled enough love to notice that no one’s ever asked.
I’m not sure, nor is it pertinent, if this is a boy-girl thing. More importantly, I’d like to know how far it reaches into the reader’s soul to be asked, Would you like to read this? See what I have to say. It’s something about the space between desire and culmination, and maybe even about the forbidden empathy I might have for the avoidance inside that we dare never speak of.
I think when I reach back and pull at the very thread that holds together every first kiss I’ve ever had, lips and tongues merge into one impromptu combustion. I was turning my face, and they caught me, or suddenly our faces were close and then intertwined. And, I’ve been asked ‘Can I kiss you?’. And see, none of this is a crime, neither of passion or war. My enemy is not the kisser, just like I’m not the protagonist.
Soft lips and the pressure to seal the moment with a times-agreed-upon signature is a mating ritual we all understand. It’s the first note in maybe the song, or symphony of your love. There’s a great deal of pressure on the kisser to affirm their affection to the kissed, and the moment builds, and they’re ready to say, I want this. I think they feel that, without their push, maybe you’d be too shy; they are ready for you to know, and for themselves to feel the gratification of this new small contract between you.
But I just don’t think I’ve ever been ready. I’ve followed through on the gaze of invitation that comes from someone seasoned in the art of seduction. But I still wasn’t ready, in the sense that I was not sitting across from this person, staring at their lips, hoping, fixating, salivating at the mere thought of what it might be like to press my lips to theirs and know what it would be like to seal all the space between us. Breathe the scent of them in, and know that in that moment, it was just us. And doesn’t that just sound so nice?
Recently, I finally let go of someone. Someone, something, some fictional person so tenderly woven into the scarecrow that guarded that profound place so unknown. I stood in my field, the one that was well past harvest, and I looked up at them. And decided, maybe it was time to let go of the fear. The fictional thing that stood guard against, what? The rain? The process was messy, the innards readily fell apart, and it made my skin itchy and covered me in the remnants of its life.
I used to cast myself in a certain light in all my memories. Especially the ones about love. I was harsh and withholding; I would exile myself in anger and resentment toward those I loved. It wasn’t that I was hard to love; it was that my love was something complicated and my temper was something sharp. It was my habit to sit quietly and toil with the anger, fixating on the cars moving past ours. Being that I always found the answers if I could just stare long enough into the thousand yards beyond.
But see, something happened when that scarecrow came down. When the watch ended. It would go something like…
I let the piano climb
And the tears fall,
And then pour.
So, while something classic played on,
I could be something to be adored.
Maybe I wasn’t so callous and cruel. Maybe it was that no one had ever asked if I wanted a kiss. Maybe no one had ever asked if I was okay? Maybe no one ever told me that the space between desire is a gentle question.
The unknown is scary, and flowery words are ephemeral. But, I’ve met myself on lonely walks where the music in my ears filled up my soul so thoroughly that I shed a tear just simply because I felt so much of whatever there was to feel. And, I so long to let go of whatever it is I’m afraid of. The fear that maybe things are temporary or messy or unclear before the kiss. I think I’d like to live in the moment long enough to feel the music start to play from within me. And maybe, look at my lover and say, Can I kiss you?
Your ability to love is directly correlated to your capacity to grieve.
