My Thoughts Before And After Kissing You

Please stop staring at my t-shirt and just kiss me. I can’t tell if you’re just staring at my boobs or if you’re really interested in James Franco’s face on my boobs. Please stop saying that the picture of James Franco on my shirt looks like Lionel Richie and just kiss me. Please stop drinking your $2 beer and kiss me.

Please stop making jokes about how cute it is that I have to be home at a certain hour and just kiss me. It’s ridiculous enough that by default of not having a car and still living at home, my life is bound by my parent’s expectations. It’s even more ridiculous that you haven’t kissed me.

On the escalator steps, on the curb of the pub, as we sit at the tram stop, just turn to me and kiss me.

Put your hands on me when you do.  I will likely have my jacket or something in my hands (I always do and will, pre and post you), so use yours to pull me in.

Who cares that I’m one year away from being a twentysomething chump and yet haven’t seen Europe. You, though at your ripe old age of 23, have been around the world; drunk absinthe in underground bars, took trains from Spain to anywhere and checked off all your bucket list items.

Who cares that we’re on opposite ends of suburbia: you from your upper-crust while I from the humble ‘hashtag westside’.

Who cares and just kiss me.

You wear fucking black Chuck Taylors so your sense of culture can’t be all that cultivated.

Who cares anymore?

Your train arrives in one minute and you spend those 60 seconds kissing me.

I’m dizzy from my one cider. I’m a lightweight but I talk myself up like a champ.

To this day, I’ve never truly kissed sober.

I’m on my train now. It departed 12 minutes after you’d got on your train to the east, leaving me on the platform with moist lips.

Everything here is so loud. I am not seeing the world outside or the graffiti scrawled ceiling or the people or the night out. I am only seeing the things you said.

You told your friends about me, about some stupid costume I told you I wore once. They said I was funny. Funny code for weird. Code for awkward. Code for keep her around for a bit of a laugh.

For girls like me, that’s the fate we know. The joke’s always on us right?

You’re going away really soon, to work in France or something equally as cool. You talk about it like it’s just a casual thing, like everyone can just pack up and whisk away to a foreign country.

Some of us have lives we can’t escape here- and fucked-up minds that we’ll never ever be able to escape from. You don’t know this about me and you’ll never know this. You’ll be in France before I know it, without any of my many nuances coming up. I’ll be your fond fun fling before France. Nothing serious.

The train is getting colder and the world is getting louder.

Someone’s ringtone is that tune from The Hunger Games. Foreshadowing. This-whatever this is- we’ll be dead before I know it.

I liked it a lot better when I was waiting for you to kiss me.