You didn’t want anyone to know I left you. You treated it as a terrible secret.  Why? you asked. And, how could you? You told no one the truth: we never kissed. Not in all our years together. The kisses, like schools of fish, swam upstream without us.  

I pity me. And us. I, who dreamt of kisses all my life, who was told as a girl that a single kiss can save lives, change the tides, the weather, the time of day, the future. Even the afterlife. My Uncle Louie said this years ago, bless his soul. He said that’s why he married Aunt Maude. One kiss, and he asked her to be his wife.

I read articles in Seventeen and Vogue on how to kiss a man. Some said to practice on your hand. Keep the lips soft, the tongue still. Don’t bite or nibble or lick. Not right away. Of course, there were other articles, more poetic, in The Knot and Christian Bride, that compared a kiss to a rose, a kiss to a kite, a kiss to a boat.  (No mention of what might happen next.) Another said a kiss is like a laundromat for the mind. It cleanses the thoughts, undresses the soul.

Then why were we denied? Of course, I know. You said you couldn’t put your mouth on mine. It reminded you of death, of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Of germs. Contamination. And what if you had bad breath? (Your father had terrible halitosis. You can still smell his ghost when he stops by for a break from the great beyond.)

You kissed my cheeks of course, and my neck and breasts. But somehow, those kisses left me cold. Maybe that’s why I began to dream of other men and women with beautiful mouths. Like Angelina Jolie, for example. In one dream, she was holding my hand, but when I looked at her face, she had no eyes or nose, only fat wet lips. In another, she sucked mollusks from the sand.

At night, I began to fantasize. Could I buy a ticket to a kiss?  Lasso a kiss like a calf at a rodeo?  Train you to kiss me like a circus master trains a tiger to jump through flaming hoops? That’s the question I asked myself as I crossed my arms over my chest and drifted off to sleep.  And I am asking it again as I walk off alone, leaving our home one last time. 

‍Why did you betray me? you asked again and again. I didn’t confess that I just wanted a kiss before I grow old and leathery and numb. I didn’t want to talk about what I missed. You looked so sad—so hollowed out, like a husk of man, not at all yourself. I couldn’t admit that sadness follows me as well. That it’s everywhere I go as memories blink on and off in my mind like fireflies in the summer dusk.