Second Kiss

A first kiss is a youthful and awkward thing. You don't know what to do; you don't even know how to do it. And yet, you talk about it years after as if it sang the smoothest of your romantic personal songs. I was barely there for the first one, being shocked out of mind that it was happening at all.
But the second, that kiss most retrievable, most rememberable, most replayable of my self-history was the one that so subtlely changed life forever. I was a thousand miles north of the scene of the first. I was sitting alone late at night when she showed up at the door. She had a job, and a car, and an interest in going out for pizza that night. We went downtown and I can't quite remember more than sitting at the table and laughing and feeling so good that someone like her wanted to be around someone like me... I can't quite remember more than that, but for ending up outside and walking into the trees across the street. There was a very short trail, a tall old tree, and a great branch reaching out, stretching just over our heads. There was a closening pause that was so pleasant, and so warm, and so right,...and there was a second kiss under the great branch that was the far limit of my, at that moment, universe.
I never forget it. It was just everything nice and good and beatiful; it was co-meditation on wanting to be closer to one another, it was a shared emotion so deep, not a thought crept in on the moment beyond the moment as it happened.