What the Mouth Remembers

You kissed me first
like someone checking for a heartbeat –
not urgent, just unsure
if hope was still warm under the skin.
The crush of it
like the first snowflake landing
and daring the wind to move it.

In the shade of the pear tree,
you leaned in with lips that tasted of sunlight and orchard grit.
Your exhale smelled of cut grass,
your tongue of peaches split open on the sill.
I smiled into it
because you hadn’t yet learned
how easily I bruise.

Later –
that rainstorm kiss.
The one on the porch, with my shirt sticking to me like a dare.
Your hands mapping me like 
You’ve memorized a canticle
but sings it dirty just to see if God flinches.
You bit me.
And I let you.

We once kissed in a dressing room mirror –
your lipstick already smeared,
It was clumsy, glorious –
like trying to drink from a fountain
without spilling what we meant.

And then there was the stairwell –
that kiss with its teeth bared.
I didn’t ask.
You didn’t need me to.
Your back on the railing,
My chest all salt and verdict.
We weren’t making memories,
We were marking territory.

But things shift.
Don’t they always?

The kiss in the parking lot
where your mouth barely touched mine
because your hands were fists in your pockets
and you’d already spoken to him.
I tasted rust and restraint.
Like you were kissing a wound you’d made
but couldn’t admit.

There was one
on my birthday
when your lips moved slow,
but your eyes checked the clock.
You kissed like someone
setting a glass on a table
before leaving the room.

The worst was the kitchen.
No words.
No fight.
Just a kiss so polite
it burned.

And still –

I remember the last one.
It was dusk.
You held my jaw like it was the only fragile thing left.
Your mouth pressed to mine like a benediction
you didn’t believe in anymore.
We both cried through our noses.
The kiss tasted like
forbearance.
And matchsticks.

You left, and I stayed lit
for hours.