If I kissed you, would you kiss me back?
Our second kiss was the memorable one.
With you, our second everything was always the better version.
A bit more secure, more resolute, more intimate.
It wasn’t the revision that comes between drafts,
but more like the second pancake,
a softness and crispness from a properly warmed pan.
Your silence at the end left me without a proper story to tell myself,
and years later I think about pancakes a lot,
about our breakfasts after nights of laughter,
our coffees and cannabis, and our first pancake arguments.
I visit the room permanently reserved for you in my mind castle
and find disjointed memories and mismatched versions that ache with misunderstanding.
I’ve lost time excavating the truth from the grave of our relationship,
wondering if I missed the unsaid along the way or buried it in the soil of my delusion.
Though I think that miscoded indifference might be the simplest answer,
which doesn’t feel as cruel and monstrous as the alternate endings.
I’ve come to the conclusion that our story was never about pancakes,
never an issue of waiting for a pan to warm or getting the recipe right.
I was merely your cilantro.
The earthy goodness that lights me up was perhaps merely unpalatable to you.
Making sense of the Jekyll and aldehydes of it all,
I understand now that I was flooding with the romance of your consent,
experiencing the best flavors of life as your lips met mine
and felt your body heat and heartbeat trick mine into feeling acceptance,
and you were kissing a mouthful of soap.
If I kissed you, would you kiss me back?
The answer should have been, “No,” but how could either of us had known that at the time?
