profoundly ordinary

I can still feel the perfect circle of his lips against mine, a millisecond of contact stretched across years of memory for the simple confession it held: I like you. I had no time to respond before the kiss ended — could not have responded had I wished. I was frozen in the shock of realizing that unannounced, my first kiss had come and gone. 

His shadow fell over my face, his fingers curled over my knuckles. I’d been the one to set my hand upon the armrest between us in the dark of the theater, thinking be bold. I felt no attraction, just curiosity. I had never held hands in the dark of a theater on a date before. I had never gone on an actual real Date before. 

I was twenty-two, and my mind had just stopped not because my first kiss was spectacular but because it was so profoundly ordinary. 

It was after midnight, and we stood in an empty corridor of the mall halfway to the train station. We’d been ambling when he pulled gently on my hand to halt-and-turn me. Then he’d leaned down. 

After that first time, he kissed me again and then told me in words what he’d just said with his lips. We held hands all the way back to the train station. I glowed, not from our contact but from those words: I like you, I really like you. 

Later that night, I lay on my bed with the tip of my middle finger pressed to my mouth. I still felt nothing. When I replayed my memories of the evening, I felt only the cool distance of an observational scientist in the field.

Before I’d officially parted ways with my date, we sat in my car and tried to make out. I didn’t know what I was doing and he knew it. Relax, he whispered, and I tried. I wanted so desperately to enjoy it, but I also couldn’t help thinking that I’d just confirmed a lifelong suspicion: kissing wasn’t for me. 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t ghosted him after that night. Sometimes I press my finger to my lips and wonder what it would be like to want to kiss anyone at all.