A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

Kiss. Sometimes the word is onomatopoeia; echoes of the syllables are quick, pursed and slippery when wet. May’s kisses are not wet. I don’t like the onomatopoeia kiss; I want meat and skin in the way I put my lips on someone else’s.

I’m very particular about my kissing.

Sometimes we start kissing and it’s easy; our lips touch and the day goes on. But then, sometimes we kiss, our lips touch, and everything is rearranged. The kiss takes over; it demands we stop and stay.

Sometimes kissing is soft and safe. Sometimes it’s hard, sharp, rife with teeth and tension.

And then, sometimes kissing is language. Sometimes kissing is every word we’ve ever spoken, all at once.

Yesterday, mid evening. I come home ravenous. May is fiddling with the open carcass of a computer. I collapse on the bed, he follows me, we kiss. It’s one of those ones. We will be here a while.

“I love how you kiss,” I say to him, between connection.

“You should, you taught me how.”

“I did? I don’t remember that.”

“Mmm,” he answers, and I feel his voice hum on my cheek.

His lips are bread and water, and wine. His lips are literature. His lips are – fuck all, I don’t care. We kiss.

“Let’s have sex,” he says.

“No, I’m starving,” I answer. “I’m getting up right now to go make food.” We kiss again. We keep on kissing. He swings his hips into me like a dancer. The denim grinds my thigh muscles.

I have one hand on his hip and the other down the small of his back. He is soft and hard in all the best places.

My mind is wandering somewhere past Maymay’s earlobes, but my stomach refuses to be swayed. It groans loudly.

“We should have dinner,” I say in the direction of his ear.

He counters. “No, we should have sex.”

“No, we should have dinner.” He starts in on the side of my neck, rubbing the stubble of his beard around the bulb of skin behind my ear, where the bone springs to the surface.

Oh, you bastard, I’m thinking. I should never have taught you how to do that.

“I’m getting up now,” I say.

“Okay,” he answers. We kiss.

“No, really,” I say.

“Uh huh,” he answers. We kiss. His beard on the edges of my lips makes the nerve endings tingle.

“God,” -between mouthfuls- “I’m so” -I’m breathing faster- “fucking hungry.” I roll to the edge of the bed, stand up.

He stands up with me, and runs his tongue along the profile of my neck: another thing I taught him. “Sex,” he whispers.

I throw him back down on the bed and he smiles up at me, legs sprawled open. “No,” I say, “food.” We both start giggling. I walk away.