Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

First Kiss
by Nicole Flower

Twenty-Sixth Contest
SECOND Place

I've never been shy with boys before.
You know this, because I've already told you.
I don't get around, it's nothing like that.
But I've been kissed a lot, and I like to flirt.
With you, I'm a nervous wreck
Of sweaty palms and a racing heart and a tumble of ideas
Of everything that might go wrong — or right.
It's our third date, a sticky summer night as we stand outside my car.
I don't know that seven months from now I'll decide to move to another state
Just to be with you.
Or that a year from now, you'll propose to me on a moonlit night on the beach.
All I know right now is that you want to kiss me.
I can see it in your smile, the way your eyes crinkle as you lean on my car door,
Head tilted at me.
I try to play it cool: 
I'm a package of long hair tossed over my shoulder,
Of flirty shoves and batted eyelashes.
We banter, as blood rushes so loudly in my ears it drowns out the night:
No more crickets chirping, no more frogs singing. 
Just you now, your green eyes dancing as your faces inches nearer to mine.
Maybe I had butterflies before; now they've turned into bats,
Beating with thick, incessant wings against my rib cage.
I take a deep breath,
I lean in ever so slightly,
And there are your lips, brushing softly, so softly against mine on this dark night.
It's over too quickly, the memory already a hazy, pleasant dream.
I'm dazed, flustered as I leave you,
Ducking into my car for a long drive home.
I touch my mouth as I drive, smiling.
Three months from now you'll tell me that you love me for the first time.
A year from now, you'll propose to me.
But I don't know that now.
All I have right now is a tingling sensation on my lips,
And a beautiful, blurred moment of a first kiss, shared in the dark.