women i've kissed

the women i’ve kissed
are a strange lot-

they still live in the depths of my body like
geologic layers

their sexual memory returning in spring when everything is sprouting

messy and filthy and wet

the first was love. the horrid kind where you can’t remember whose shirt belonged to who first

and everyday you want to climb inside them and sleep forever.

she pulled me to her while her boyfriend watched too stunned to stop her. her mouth was the unforgiving beauty of the grand canyon. red red red the kind of red that turns hearts to dust.
i stopped her out of embarassment for myself, and the eyes of her boyfriend disentegrating in front of us.

i wish she’d never stopped. i wish i’d kicked him out of the house, and everyone else who lay about drinking. i wish i’d kicked them all out and drowned myself in her paper white skin and the smell of fabric softener that emanated from her at all times.
i got a second chance years later. a boy was with us and all of us half naked after two bottles of gin. i opened my lips and took her nipple in my mouth and closed my eyes just as the phone rang. i never should have answered the phone.

i had been sick and sober for a few weeks and in recovery from the bronchitis bought several forties and drank them with a girlfriend and a cute boy on her bedroom floor. i went to the bathroom and when i returned and opened the door i saw them all over each other on the floor, his cock already out and her mouth around it. i went back to the bathroom only to be summoned by them. i found myself entangled with them, her hands deep inside me. i never kissed either one of them.

there was a night when i stood in a city park, on the ledge of a dry fountain, a law student with wild hair and eyes like a lion’s in the hunt stood with me. ritilin and beer were driving us closer as my boyfriend stood away from us watching like a patient guard. she kissed me hard and pulled at my shirt, my bare nipples begging at her in the cold air.

she whispered to me later while we dressed and brushed grass from our torsos that she wanted me the right way, in a bed, and i too still want it. clean white sheets and her hair everywhere and to have her closer than close to me, to hold her face and kiss her slowly and softly, so slowly that we both forget how much life can hurt.

in oregon it was an older woman, going through a divorce, playing mother to the town. i never let her mother me and it drew her closer and in more need of me than i expected. it was in her own house full of twentysomethings with no home and no job, throwing the weeks months and years away on booze and drugs and convincing themselves of this and that- she was passing out drunk in living room- both of us high from some bands stash of coke- and i took her upstairs, layed her down, brought her water. she looked up at me, asked me to stay. i lay down, held her lightly. i didn’t think anything while my mind raced from the cocaine and hoped she was passing out pleasantly next to me. i thought of my boyfriend at home, probably worried and unsure of where i was. she pulled me to her. i was resistant, unsure of where i was. i detangled from her quickly enough. the combined smells of weed and incense in her room still lives for me in that moment- her lips stinging of cheap wine and the metallic taste of cocaine.

sometimes i retrace my movements, wondering why i’d stopped her.
but i know why.

the first time was love.