Girls Kissing Girls

Girls Kissing Girls

My life has no real beginning or end. But the girls do. Each one of them has a distinct starting point, a clear end. You could say my life is defined by how each one took a piece of me, and when.

God, they ruined me. But in the most beautiful way. I wouldn't be who I was now, past all beginnings and ends and middles and in betweens, if it hadn't been for the five of them.

So here I am, taking parts of them as if they were shards of colored glass, arranging them into a mosaic of memories that will give me some clue as to what it all was supposed to amount to. The coy smiles, the kisses, the tears, the words left unsaid. The lack of closure.

That's why I'm doing this. For closure. Even though I haven't spoken to any of them for years now, they're still here, lingering like ghosts over my shoulder. They are in every word I write whether I want them to be there or not. Every time I create a beautiful girl for the page, parts of them creep in and take hold, taking what is rightfully theirs.

So now I'm going to put their ghosts to rest. Give the memories what they want - to be seen. To have proof through written word that they happened, that the girls were real after all. Not just some lovely rose colored dream.

But they were not always rosy. There are parts of them that were uglier than anything I've ever seen. So I'm going to show those parts too.

Without further ado, in the order they should rightfully be portrayed in, here they are:

I. The Hummingbird

She was the gateway drug of relationships. Everything else came after her.

And hell if she didn't make it seem like she was the best thing to ever happen to me. Like nothing else could come close to what she had to offer. And this is what she offered me:

Kisses under streetlights

Confessions in the dark

An inevitable heartbreak

Because she never intended on sticking around for long. She even told me so, one night at a concert as we sat on a leather couch. She was smoking, letting the vapor drift down the side of the couch, and I watched, mesmerized.

When I told her I wanted to kiss her, there on that couch in front of everyone in the room, she smirked, looked up at me through the dim lighting. Her eyes were beacons, I was begging her to lead me on, let me see where she could take me.

"You can use me to experiment," She told me, "To see what you like. But I don't want more than that."

How come I let her shatter me when I knew what was coming? She told me in the simplest of words what I could expect from her. Not all people are that straight forward, honest in their intentions. That's what I admired about her.

I let myself fall completely into her because I was so young, so goddamn young. I didn't know any better. But a part of me knew that I was opening a door, one that couldn't be closed.

Girls kissing girls. Something no one talked about. But she was talking about it. She was offering it. And that excited me.

-

"I'm attracted to your mind."

My breath caught after I said these words. I was so nervous. She was staring at me like she wanted to kiss me. And then she did.

My eyes were open, and I watched hers slip closed, felt her lips open. It was the strangest sensation. My body felt warm and light, like the air must feel inside of a hot air balloon. Floating up, up, up. I broke the kiss to let out a disbelieving laugh.

"What is it?"

"This just - it feels so cool."

She drew me in again with a hand to my jaw, cradling my face. I let her lower me down onto the bed, climb on top of me. The weight felt good. My head was reeling with this new discovery, that two bodies can create something electric, can warm each other's blood so easily. I never wanted it to stop.

I never wanted it to stop, but she eventually did, and I leaned into empty space when she pulled away. An amused smile graced her lips, which were red from friction. Staring at her mouth made something in my stomach pull downwards, the sinking feeling you get as you mount a roller coaster, exhilarated by the idea of racing down with no way to stop.

-

It was so cold outside but we were outside anyways because I needed a smoke and she needed a joint. The picnic benches were dry but freezing, and I couldn't feel my ass anymore.

I was showing her music that made my brain feel hot when I was like this - stoned, happy, a bit turned on. I kept looking over at her to make sure she felt the same way. Her eyes, half lidded and sparkling in the dark, told me everything I needed to know.

"Come on," She said, and we stood up. I let my cigarette drop to the ground so she could take my numb hand, show it some warmth.

"One, two, three-" We sprinted out of the pavilion, out onto the lawn covered with a foot of snow. It was nothing but a wide open expanse of white, shining underneath the light of the moon and the stars.

I was so high, I couldn't feel my feet. I looked up at the sky as we ran from the shadows, the threat of being found out. But it was that time of night when no one was outside but you, where you were the only person awake and alive in the whole world and God was your only witness. The stars above me spun in circles, ran alongside me as I let out a laugh, and it was the only sound that pierced the night.

II: The Owl

I don't think I ever really knew this one. She wouldn't let me that close. Her heart was a temple and my feet were too dirty, my hands too unclean.

There was always this purity about her, this innocence that she held on to no matter what depraved teenage antics we got up to. She was soft spoken, her hands slender and white and clean. Clean. Even though she smelled like stale cigarette smoke, she was always so clean.

-

I watched her in awe. She was standing in the shower, the curtain open, staring at me through the mirror. Her skin was bare, and water poured over her in rivets, streams, washing away everything but the whiteness of her body.

"This is me," She said, holding out her arms, "As a human."

I couldn't think of anything to say. I couldn't turn around and walk over to her, kiss her like I wanted to. She was just so beautiful, and it made my heart ache like a bruise, and I didn't know how to tell her what she did to me, how she made me want to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time because she was always so closed off but it only made me want to get inside.

But this time I didn't try to open the door. I just stood there, watching her smile and tilt her chin up and run her hands through her slick black hair. I was afraid that if I turned around, it would all be a mirage, that her body would dissolve into steam and I'd see nothing but empty white walls where she had once been.

-

One day I was leaving her house, walking out into the driveway, when I remembered I left my laptop in her room. I went back inside to get it.

She was standing at her dresser, straightening things absentmindedly like she didn't know what to do with her hands. And she was crying. She was crying, there were streaks of mascara starting to crawl down her cheeks like a spider's legs, her eyes were glossy and brown and lovely and heartbreaking.

I immediately went to her, asked her what was wrong, tell me what's wrong, sweetheart. She looked down at me, pushed her hair behind her ears, and gave me a shaky smile.

"I just like you so much," She said quietly. "It's scary."

I showered her with kisses - her lips, her wet cheeks, the corners of her eyes, the tip of her nose. Everywhere, everywhere. I led her to the bed, and tried to show her how much she meant to me at age fifteen, when your heart can only hold one emotion at a time, and sometimes it can overflow with so much pure love that you have no idea what to do with it. And I wanted her to know I understood how scary this was, how confusing it is to be attached to someone so completely. I wanted her to know I felt the same way.

-

We were mermaids in the dark. We were the dark coral on the sea floor, colors shifting in the failing light. We were fish, we were sharks, we were God.

I felt invincible in that midnight pool, floating on my back like sea foam. And she was right beside me, her hair a black wave in the water. Nothing could touch us except the cool dark water on our skin, the cool night air on our faces.

We would duck underwater, eyes shut tight, and fumble for each other in the dark, our lips coming together in closed mouth kisses. She'd smile against my lips and I'd feel the bubbles tickle the bottom of my nose from her giggles.

And we stayed that way for hours, drifting in that swimming pool till dawn, till our faces were painted yellow and pink at the edges.

III: The Falcon

We used each other, completely and irreversibly, until there was nothing left for either of us to give.

She was a strange one. Caught in between girls and boys, not knowing which one she wanted. But she wanted me. She told me that, and that's when it started, the not quite relationship that we had. She was the almost girlfriend, the maybe lover. The one I don't know how to classify because we never talked about what went on between us.

-

We were walking hand in hand across parking lots, meandering through town with no destination. She was licking a popsicle, the juice staining her hand orange.

When we stop I realize we're behind a church. She looks at me, smiling with her sticky mouth, staring at me with her sparkling eyes.

"I bet you've never kissed a girl at a church," She says.

I haven't. So I lean in and kiss her, and it's quick, but I still feel it, the surge in my stomach that tells me God, I'm crazy for her.

-

I couldn't stop giggling. I was lying on her bed, the bottle of wine corked and cradled to my chest. I set it down and sit up, struggling to get my balance, and pull her towards me.

She climbs on top of me and gives me a kiss. I smile against it and try to get more, my hands moving everywhere, but she pulls away.

"I can't tell if you really want this," She says, "Or if you're just drunk and horny."

We stare at each other, and my smile fades away. I taste like her and it makes me sad, because I know she might be right, a part of me is just using her for this - touch, touch, touch. After awhile I can't meet her eyes anymore, and she sighs, such a heavy sound. She climbs off of me and walks out of the room.

-

There were so many mornings like this. We would head outside when everyone else was starting to wake up, because we hadn't slept a wink. The sky would be changing, shifting from night to dawn to morning, lovely rosy pinks and songbird yellows, and the branches of the trees were all silhouetted by the first rays of sun.

I'd sit across from her on the porch, and I lean against the railing, it's cold with dew against my arm. She'd hand me a cigarette and a lighter after she'd lit her own, and we'd sit with our cups of black coffee, steam curling from the rims, sometimes talking, sometimes just watching each other.

She looked so tired, but so fucking happy, like she wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here, with me. She takes a drag of her cigarette around a smile, and I know that smile's for me, for this morning, for all the mornings that came before it and all the ones that will follow this one.

Black coffee, cigarettes, and watching the sun wake up with her. That's what I'll miss the most about this one.

-

My phone was blowing up. I was too scared to answer the phone calls, because if the texts were anything to go by, hearing this girl's voice wasn't going to be fun.

A new text. I read it while biting my lip, hard. This girl is threatening to kill me for sleeping with her, Her, the one sitting next to me, silent.

"Why did you tell her?" I ask. "Why the fuck would you do that?"

She's silent for a long time. I stare at her, wanting reasons, concrete reasons, half hoping she'll tell me to ignore the texts and kiss her because that's what she really wants.

"I love her," She says simply. "I had to tell her."

"No, you didn't," I protest weakly, because all my strength is gone now, hearing her say that. She loves this angry girl, not me, not me. That's all I needed to hear.

IV: The Canary

She was the best friend. She saw me through everything, every stumble, every crack.

I've written so many poems about her, poems she'll never read. She knows how I feel about her, and she felt the same fleetingly, but it never led anywhere. We weren't meant to be soul mates in that way. We know each other completely, but that doesn't make us lovers. We were for a night, but that night is just a memory now.

-

The waves crashed around us in a symphony of sound, the water cool against our skin. I laughed at the sun, at how bright it was, and swam further out.

I turn back to see her, standing nearer to the shore, her fingertips dancing across the surface of the waves. I kick myself back and send a wave towards her playfully.

I look back up at the sky, hold my arms out, and let out a yell, a deliriously happy yell, and part of me hopes that God can hear me somewhere in the clouds. I see her smiling against the rays of the sun. I felt peace in that moment, in that ocean, watching her with my heart brimming with love.

-

The green light above her porch bathed us in an eerie glow. We were taking turns sipping some vodka and orange juice, sitting on the steps of her porch.

"Isn't it crazy that the same stars are out all the time?" I say, staring up at the night sky and watching it spin.

"Not always," She slurs, "Because the world turns. But eventually the same ones come back. Like the big dipper."

It's silent for a minute. I light another cigarette, warming myself up, and ask, "Where do you see yourself in twenty years?"

She thinks about my question, then says, "Married to Hollie."

"Really?" I take a deep swallow of our drink and close my eyes, trying to imagine her and her girlfriend at the altar, buying a house, having kids. I can't see it. "But...you're so young. You have so much time to meet other people..."

I look over at her. She's staring up at the stars still, lost in the black. "My soul is bound to hers," She says finally. "It's hard to explain."

I exhale smoke up to the nighttime heavens. "I never want to trap you that way," I tell her quietly.

-

Later that same night, we're both sitting side by side in her basement, buzzed, thinking thinking thinking, and I ask her how she feels about me.

"You're my best friend," She says slowly, and our hands entwine between us. I brush my thumb over the back of her hand soothingly as she talks. "But sometimes I think, god, I want to kiss her. And I never do because I'm dating Hollie, but. I still want to."

I swallow, tilting my head back to stare at the ceiling. Everything is spinning, even my words as they fall out of my mouth. "I want to kiss you, too."

There's a silence, and then she whispers in the darkness, "They say that one kiss is stronger than any king. That it can change the universe."

"Do you believe that?"

I feel her move towards me, closer in a way we've never been before. "Yes."

And there, on that couch in that basement in the dark, we kissed and laid down beside each other, in what would become our one and only night together.

V: The Raven

I'm talking about her last because she is the very first. So many firsts with this one, yet we never even kissed, never even touched. She was so many miles away. And that's what haunts me more than anything else about her - that we never even met face to face, we never had the chance of a real in person connection. I've never held her hand, never held her in my arms, and I never will.

That kills me, even now, years later.

I wonder where she is now.

-

I was telling this girl I barely knew about all the homework I had to do, how I had to answer questions on this short story.

"I know Edgar Allan Poe," She said.

So she helped me with it, and before I know it I'm opening a package from her on Christmas Day.

It was a silver necklace of an anatomical heart. "Like the Tell Tale Heart," She said, "What first got us talking all those months ago."

I didn't take that necklace off for two years, except to shower. Because I was protecting it from the water, like it was my own heart, so it wouldn't tarnish.

That necklace sent five hundred miles to my doorstep was the only way our skin cells ever touched. It was the only tangible piece of her that I had.

-

The first time she said "I love you", I wasn't even awake to hear it.

It was two A.M., and we were skyping. And I fell asleep like that, the laptop open and the chat screen open too, and I had no idea how she looked at me, or what she said, but in the morning I was left with three simple words in the chat screen, no explanation, no warning. Just those three words.

In grey numbers, I see that two minutes after she typed those words, she ended the call.

-

"I'm going to a party," her text read. She sent me a picture of herself, wearing a leather jacket and her hair down and her mouth colored glossy red. She looked so sexy, and I kept thinking, that's mine, that's really mine.

"Don't let the boys get you," I texted back, only half joking. I was worried, I was young, I was insecure, and I kept thinking to myself, she could do so much better than me.

And that night, she proved me right.

There was a boy, she said, and one thing led to another, she said, and it just happened, she said.

How clich I said, and left it at that, because I was hurting too badly to respond to the rest of her apologetic texts. It was my very first heartbreak, and the wound was so big and so fresh, bleeding bright frantic red, and I had no idea what to do with myself. No idea what to do with her.

How do people do this? How do people stay together after things like this happen? I felt to the very bottom of my bones that no pain could be worse than this, the thought of the person you love with someone else. I would have rather died than felt that pain for one more second.

-

I wrote so many poems imagining the day we would finally get to meet. And nothing seemed more romantic to me after two years of longing than an airport, a suitcase, and a hug in the arrivals terminal. I could nearly taste the tears that were sure to run down my cheeks, I could feel her in my empty arms.

But that never happened. And it never will.

-

These are the girls. And there will be more after them. But they will always be with me, a ghostly halo settling around my shoulders, and I'll be going about my day and see pieces of them, and I'll be taken right back to these moments that defined my teenage years.