She pressed her lips against mine. I breathed in through my nose, softly, hoping she wouldn’t take note of this momentary distraction: life. The night, and day’s, events danced through my mind in images not words. The warmth of hospitality, a B.B.Q.’ed feast. A simple show, a simple town, the fireworks of a centennial celebration, and the electric clouds of a prairie storm capable of making centennials seem small.
I have kissed her a thousand times. One thousand. No more, no less. Enough kisses to have imagined other lips when it was hers pressed against mine. Enough kisses that the mingled drama of anticipation and excitement had shifted into expectation and stagnation.
What is love, besides the central question of my life?
Is it the moments of first attraction, the zest, soul, and flow that seem to stem from skipping through nine clouds? Or is love the stolid act of holding hands after so much time, understanding, appreciation and non-appreciation that young girls coyishly cling to their young beau’s arm, whispering into his ear, “That will be us some day.”
If there is meaning in the subtle acts of randomness that have woven this universe together, then perhaps there is meaning in the fact that I put a question-mark at the end of the first sentence and a period on the second.
She pressed her lips to mine, and I pressed my lips back. I thought of the show, a man finding himself by untethering himself amidst an unknown sea. In the movie fresh new love, always changing, always yearning, always searching, was the incarnation of happiness.
I considered stagnation.
I kissed her. For now, a kiss is good enough.
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