The First Kiss

Celebrations followed the first kiss. Not the kind where you eat nice things, burst crackers, and catching hold of your love by her waist, swing her around and say, ‘hey! Let’s boogie woogie’; but where it takes place inside the heart, hidden, the joy unnoticed by any except for a pair of swallows about who you could wonder, what the hell were they were doing at this time of the evening out on the trees when it was so damn cold, and you sat down at a quiet place in the garden close to each other and yet shivering, tried to get closer, and then face to face, so close, you suddenly found your lips almost touching, and then imitating a nearby dream, reciting the beginnings of its rarefied verses, you let them tantalizingly brush against each other’s, and then again, and again, cupping the verses, drinking, more of them, then missing something deeply, savagely, trying to tear out that which continuously slipped from your hold, the verses now gone and in their place an anger, an intense pain, the strings of a violin tweaked till they were almost torn, and still the scorching want, to pull her inside you, to decimate, you wanted in your arms, nothing.

And then defeated, you parted, and yet it was a sweet defeat, because all that was inside you had gushed out, almost bringing out tears, the biting cold clawing out the slabs in the mountain that had blocked a spring, the unbearable pain replaced by a calm emptiness. And the world looked beautiful, the moon whiter, the snow clad treetops like monks clad in white fur gazing down at you with a beautiful smile and you laughing at what you had just imagined, the night cozy because day was much harsher, you wanted more swallows, and there was suddenly so much of happiness when you remembered the future will bring more kisses.