Sheila Nevins | 05/15/2008 4:57 pm

First Kiss

A Poem

Do you remember your
very first kiss or has
it faded …

First Kiss

I ran into my first love on the streets of
N.Y.C.
Sweet love from decades
Ago.
Forty years.
He was elderly – "Sheila," he said
"Oh my God."
He was my very first tongue kiss
My rubber band braces snapped
And almost blinded him
During spin-the-bottle in –
Elaine Zeckendorf’s mothy closet
(Does anyone use mothballs anymore?)
Memory so clear
Forty years ago
A moment
And there he was
Forty years in snap crackle
And here he was
And we exchanged
Niceties
Dr. Lawyer Indian Chief me – him
Solomon Grundy born on Monday
Wednesday’s child is full of woe
And then gone
down the cement block
I turned back to catch the
time
He was gone
My heart pounding hard a blueprint
And I knew
I had been there
Young

Read more about: Love, Poetry, Relationships

58 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

I remember going to a party in 7th grade and when my dad picked me up afterwards he asked how I liked the party. I told him it was awful “kids were kissing” YUK. He smiled and now I know why. My first kiss was at 13 and 8th grade. No big deal, but he was my first official boyfriend. It was a month before graduation and he went on to a different highschool. I didn’t see him for years and then I ran into him one day at College. We said hello and talked a little, he seemed shy. Sweet memory.

By Marata Kirk on 05/15/2008 12:08 pm

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“A kiss is just a kiss a sigh is just a sigh…” I was 11 and her name was Lora Lee—she had the softest lips—I was infatuated—she wasn’t—life’s like that, I guess, “…the ordinary things in life as time goes by….”

By Frank Peterson on 05/15/2008 12:24 pm

Now let’s talk about The Kiss, the one that really mattered: It was Anne of course—lord, that woman could kiss—one of her kisses sent a frisson of delight through my entire body—and it went on and on and on—one of those kisses that seem to last three days—and by the time she finished kissing me that first time I was besotted, totally, utterly, forever in love, and though she is gone that kiss is in the movie in my mind that never stops playing. How couldn’t a man fall in love with a woman like that.

By Frank Peterson on 05/15/2008 1:09 pm

What a beautiful tribute,Frank, and how lucky you have been to have loved like that. People go through their whole lives without knowing that kind of joy. Your Anne was blessed to have found you and to think it all started with a great kiss.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/15/2008 1:18 pm

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Phyllis: She chose me—why? God only knows, but she did and they were the best years of my life with her. If I ever meet another like her I won’t hesitate—I used to be shy in those long ago days, but she shook that out of me really quickly. Or should I say she kissed that out of me very very quickly. I think I’ll have a cuppa and remember that day fully—-as if I ever could stop.

By Frank Peterson on 05/15/2008 1:38 pm

Phyllis: do you remember the film Portrait of Jennie? Meeting Anne was like that—the feeling, the way she affected me, the resonance of the romance of it, for want of a better word—just remembered that film. Every time I watch it it affects me the same way. Lovely film, lovely story.

By Frank Peterson on 05/15/2008 5:30 pm

Frank, That was a simply beautiful recollection shared…thank you.

By T S on 05/15/2008 4:22 pm

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TS You’re welcome—it’s always with me as is she.:-)

By Frank Peterson on 05/15/2008 5:10 pm

I do remember my first kiss, a boy that liked me, when I was about 13, chased me into the front hall of a building around the corner from my best friends house, and gave me a kiss I hated. I still feel the wetness on my mouth after all these years. Ugh

By Alessan O on 05/15/2008 12:25 pm

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My first kiss, I was 14, he was 16. We had a major crush or so I thought. It was all very innocent so imagine my shock when he turned 17 and suddenly found himself to be married as he got a girl pregnant. I think I cried for a whole year. He worked with my mother and decades later he told her: You should be happy we did not become a couple, I was a lousy husband. The first kiss which really mattered was when I was 36 and he was a 42 year old bachelor and he was and is my everything 40 years later.

By Jeannot Kensinger on 05/15/2008 12:33 pm

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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN A bird, bright and quick, blue with livid streaks, would arrive on the windowsill, as official harbinger, and then. The low would be raised up, the sneers crushed under their own bricks, the teeter-totter would cease to choose sides and sit in peaceful sway on its fulcrum. The kiss that had been held back all those years at last would release into the mouth in flood. And WHY NOT would replace all other dicta, but gently, as a sunlit nudge. –––April Bernard

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/15/2008 12:43 pm

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My first kiss was rather unsuccessful - from a boy who was a great friend of mine, but wasn’t romantic, somehow. Years later he re-appeared - gay! The sizzling kiss(es) came from a college man when I was still in high school. The good girl “making out” - my parents were appalled…but I can still remember the heat coming up my spine - spoiled me for anything else for years.

By Pamela Munro on 05/15/2008 1:46 pm

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First kiss, had not thought of it for eons. Such innoence at 11 i was not evening thinking of kissing and was not expecting it. Ted T invited me to a band dance in the mid 60’s. (This was the Beatles era expressed small town U.S.A.) He was the lead vocalist, and in the middle of a song he left the band and walked over and gave me a big kiss. I was so embarassed!

By river mm on 05/15/2008 2:14 pm

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I was 12 and I can’t forget it even though I wish I could. My first kiss was from a guy who I did not like — not that way. I had a crush on someone else at the time. The guy I was with that evening was supposed to be “my friend.” He slipped one on me before I could back away. I kept my lips shut — and yes, his were open. He backed away and said, “Ah.” I couldn’t wait to get away from him. I could never look at him or be around him again after that. The friendship was over. My second kiss was with the guy I really had a crush on was so much nicer and lasted much longer.

By IAM Woman on 05/15/2008 3:36 pm

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Sounds like Pamela and I had similar experiences. I was 13 sitting on a tree swing in the back yard when a good friend brought me a birthday gift (small white teddy bear with a red heart) then he leaned over and kissed me. I was shocked and pleased at the same time. He was a beautiful boy and really liked him. We never persued that aspect of our friendship and I wondered for years why. Later found out that he was gay. When he was dying from AIDS I went to visit him and we had a great laugh because I asked him if it was the kiss that turned him. Love the memory of the kiss and the memory of him.

By Maggi D on 05/15/2008 3:45 pm