today I experienced sisterhood as a first kiss. in between
the bike lane divider & the open road I like to call
a free-for-all, we got that drunken look on our faces:
the kind I’d get in the darkness all alone, when I’d be
somehow an accident & a preteen with sweaty creases
all at once. my eyes would be so wide I’d think myself caught
on the kiss-cam. my heart, here, so untouchable,
because the kiss is but a layering of the hands,
a tonguing of one’s own knuckles.
I want to describe
This for the rest of my life, waiting:
for the formation of a typhoon, for the pin to drop:
trying to find words I can lay down
in all the places I am not.
inner thigh purpling plums
on the bike seat, I picture us at a college party:
first introductions, a sight of drunken glamour,
we’d sacrifice our closeness, pretending. we keep our hearts
buried like a punishment.
all this was unexpected:
camera-flash in mid-August, flushed with liver porridge
& pig blood given warmth, the sheen of not-knowingness, maybe
unknowingness, or complete knowingness too, we smiled at the moisture
paring back our faces.
I think I like me best when I am mouth-agape,
catching sun on my tongue, laughing for a picture
with two girls who were so alive
& impossible to hurt.
The Land Bridge 