FIRST KISS

Under a brick-tunneled archway, a steely December

wind goes molten between our lips. Weeks later,

a girl passes me a handwritten note in your

sprawling seventh-grade script, torn from a spiral-bound

notebook, the bulleted shred still hanging like a flag

of surrender from a high castle window. Sorry.

Maybe that is why I am more comfortable with words

than numbers, why I thrive on the blare of ideological

marching bands, out of tune, out of alignment; why I have

been trudging unevenly ever since the length of an endless

slanted shoreline, sending up flares, circulating petitions,

protesting the decisions made by others.