KISSING

My friend recently had her first kiss. When she called to tell me the news she said she hadn’t realized there could be “so many worlds to explore in a single mouth”. She also said it in many ways reminded her of “eating something slimy.” I smiled for a long time about that one. A few days ago I was telling this same friend about something Frida Kahlo said before she died. She said, “I hope the leaving is joyful, and I hope never to return.” My friend asked me, “Do you think you want to return?” As soon as she asked the question I started crying. I thought about every year of my life, every hard fist of a moment, and it broke my heart to think I might not choose to come back. For whatever reason, the days, they do not slow river into me. They never have, and lately the moments have been especially rough. Last week I said to a friend (not the kissing friend), “I wish I could take naps… life would be a whole lot easier if there were less of it.” We both laughed. Laughing is medicine. I have a personality I developed whose only job is to laugh at the personality in me that’s depressed as hell. I have another personality that screams at them both, another that does nothing but bounce on a mini trampoline, and yet another that tries to make sense of it all via poems about the moon. It is this final personality that in the end, thank god, always seems to win. This personality says “Yes. Yes. I think I do want to return. Mostly for the kissing, for the slimy kissing, for the many worlded kissing, the only time I know for absolute certain I am not praying alone. “