You weren’t my first kiss, and you won’t be my last.

The day I was born, I kissed every single atom in the air
That passed by my lips;
I kissed the photons of light from the fluorescent hospital ceiling.
That day, I kissed myself—
My tongue, my lips, my toothless gums.
On the day I was born, I kissed
The very celebration of the existence of me in the world.

By the time I was one, I’d kissed baby powder, milk, vomit, tears, snot, fingers, blankets, pillows, baby food, my Winnie-the-Pooh,
And so much more, form the kiss curiosity gifted me.

In elementary school, I kissed the erasers on the backs of the No.2 pencils;
I kissed the greasy school lunches, and double scoops from the ice cream truck;
I kissed candy wrappers, and bubblegum flavored gum;
I kissed my index finger, still bleeding from a paper cut;
I kissed skittles and chocolate and gummy bears, and they were delicious.

I learned to kiss figuratively and metaphorically in middle school, when I decided to tell the paper my thoughts.
I kissed the snowflakes in winter—
French kisses, no less, but not exactly.
I kissed the way my own breaths caress my lips,
The way colors stroke the canvas.
I kissed the tick-tock of the clock, the blaring of the alarm.
I kissed secrets and crushes and new friends—
figuratively, I should reiterate.

When I met you, I had already kissed so many kisses that
I can’t even count them all.

And when our lips met, I noticed
That your kiss wasn’t as soft as the way the clouds swim;
I noticed that although your lips were gentle,
They weren’t as sweet as waffles drenched in syrup,
And they weren’t as smooth as the window as I pressed against it to look out the airplane.

By the time you kissed me, you were too late to be my first kiss.
I’d already kissed chapped lips and fake smiles and nail polish.
I’d already kissed sweaty palms and book covers and mechanical pencils.
Stale milk and expired chips had already passed through my mouth.
And so, you were late, because life had been a thousand steps ahead of you.

And by the time we had our kiss, I had already gotten used to the way the world tastes—bitter, and brittle, and strangely unsettling.
So I knew, the moment our lips touched, that your smile didn’t belong in the world I’d been kissing.
Although it wasn’t a spectacular kiss,
The kind coated with sprinkles,
Or the ones I read about when I kissed the letters on the pages,
Or the way the snow kisses the leaves, then makes a burial ground for them;
Although your kiss teased me about my permanent affairs with faulty pronunciation,
And the way my teeth push against each other in hopes of one day kissing braces;
Although your kiss wasn’t the kindest, or the wisest;
Although your kiss wasn’t the first kiss I kissed,
You made me temporarily forget the memory of the thousand kisses before you, and the promise of thousands more after.

And your kiss will stay with me,
A million kisses later:

Your kiss wasn’t my first, and it won’t be my last;
It was somewhere in the middle, and I won’t forget.