A Born-Again Wife's First Lesbian Kiss

(by Mary Diane Hausman- not by me!)

The first time I kissed my best friend
fireworks went off.
Really. I heard them.
Years of pent up repressions
plus weeks of mounting tension
let loose in one firecracker moment.

In my mind grew the image
of my head blowing off.

Our lips forced together
by some magnetic pull,
one set of curved flesh toward the other,
the force of two struggling hearts
below those lips, little bird hearts
beating quickly, quickly,
wanting to explode.

The kiss was soft and knowing.
Our lips knew where to go.
The kiss was hard and had a punch.
The punch of forbidden fruit.
That, if-you-do-you'll-go-to-hell-
but-if-you-don't-you'll-die-
so-what's-the-difference
kind of punch.
Right in the mouth.

When we were able to pull our faces
away from each other,
to look at what we had done,
the fire was unbearable.
The fire in her blue eyes,
the fire on her cheeks;
the air, and our breath
fanned the flames on our faces
and caught fire again.

I didn't write this. It was one of the two poems Diane read to me on the night she proposed. But, apart from the fact that her eyes are like molten pools of chocolate, rather than blue, it describes it perfectly. I'll never forget that kiss, nor the hours we spent just kissing after that.

In that moment everything just fell into place and I remember thinking just one thing: "oh!"