I don't know what made me need to check that
alarm. I blame that alarm for
everything, because then I lost
control. Then I gave it. I gave it to him, because I knew what was going to happen, but I didn't know I knew at the
time.
Call it
obsessive-compulsive disorder, or call it simply love. You wouldn't be very far off.
"
You want to come check it?"
Out from under the
blankets, and over, close to his body. I knew. I knew it was close. He backed off an inch, but only an inch, lying beside me on his side as I sat up more properly, trying to press the right buttons to be able to see the
time. I felt his chest three inches away from my
back. I felt his breath just above my arm where he'd pulled himself half to sitting. But only half. I felt his presence in my
fingers, shook and slid to the end of the bed to almost stand before he said my name.
"
Diane?" and I turned. He'd sat up fully, his long face before me through
darkness. His hand moving up in
slow motion, and I felt his fingers beneath my chin, just touching it. He made no motion, and the world stopped with every frame as his face came close through every rushed beat of my head,
thinking, thinking, and stopping. His
lips just placed themselves right over mine.
He kissed me. I was a statue.
He kissed me, and I stayed still.
Beat.
The moment that felt like an hour found my lips bridging the
millimeters he'd let set to form there, to find
my lips on his. They parted, like we knew this was going to happen. Maybe we did. Maybe we knew the first time we met.
(Later, after we'd kissed long enough I told him how the first week we'd met I'd gone to his room and drawn him a
picture on his door because I thought he was perfectly cute. "You mean you liked me as early as that?" he'd asked, so softly but almost with a bit of
awe, and that - that took me aback. This incredible fellow, so old and so put together, amazed that I'd liked him as early as that.
As early as that?
"
Of course.")
Maybe we knew that night we were talking, me in my
pajamas just feet outside my then-
boyfriend's room, talking like people who knew each other. We waited. We waited and ignored. We waited for a better time, but
the time was never right, on a cold
September evening a month before he'd tell me he was
in love with somebody else. And I still haven't recovered from that one.
But that was later.
In this time, he kissed me, and I kissed him back. He kissed me in my
bed. He kissed me in the midst of the strangest time of my life, and sent me deep into
a strange, strong well of myself that had me screaming in a hot, scalding
shower, dreaming I was watching my skin melt away. Wondering when I would
die.
He kissed me.
And the next day I started to write poems. If I thank him for absolutely nothing else, I thank him, I thank him for that.
He put
poetry back in my life.
The little
boy on the edge of my bed, thin and pale and slight as rails,
ready for sleep just before this
kiss and somehow, somehow
he fit. He fit in my room and he fit in my
life and I couldn't figure out why till he left. Why
one kiss had me dreaming of loving and flowers and him, and scribbling in a
notebook and trying to find the words for the first time in years.
Thank you, dear. Thank you, my
lovely. Thank you for giving me poetry.