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Lip Ring - By Muriel Palanca

Between you and me, a kiss is just a kiss…but the problem is, it’s not. At least not for me.

You see, you have that something extra, the prize in the Cracker Jack box. Like the Keebler elf ice skating over my teeth, carving a fissure between my lips for your tongue to melt through. And our kiss was like rice crispies where I had to finish quickly or else it would end up being a soft mushy mess no one wanted to deal with. I want that snap, crackle, pop that makes me giggle in the morning and every day after. When I felt it, I kept on laughing and making excuses because wanting you is so much more than curiosity.

It’s three in the morning and I just wrote a text that says “I miss you.” But I’m not going to send it because there are some words that mean so much more than they should. You really suck you know that? THAT’S what I should text you, that you suck. Because you’re just a smartass with a lip ring who looks like a dumbass…with a lip ring. And yet you’re still so damn cute in this awkward rocker kind of way because you’re a computer science major and you play a wicked bass. It’s like if hello kitty wore black emo eyeliner or a ninja turtle made soufflé: an odd combination but still twice as awesome.

God damn you, why do you have to be there? Like I’m on Facebook and I see you’re online and it’s this ridiculously awful torture like a diabetic in the Wonka factory. I want to IM you even if I don’t know what to say. Actually I know exactly what I want to say but I know I shouldn’t say it. I KNOW I shouldn’t but I want a mouthful of your scrumdiddlyumptious and I wanna down a bottle of your fizzy lifting drink so I can float on over to your attic on lonely nights and  I want to reach out and dance ooompa loompas around your  dubstep.

Because I listen when you say maybe. And I hear you when you call me cute.

Honey, what I’m about to say I mean with every gobstopper and golden ticket in my arsenal. Whenever I push you away, it feels like a world without chocolate. And I fucking love chocolate. Yes, it feels that bad whenever I say no to you.

We’re playing hokey pokey and you have one foot in every door I’m trying to close using force and regret and duct tape to push through. But it’s not you who’s fighting. It’s me.

Because you don’t want something halfway or someone begging you not to. You don’t want to hold back and I understand. We’re hilarious and tragic: an avalanche that swallows everything before it stops. Actually, that’s not hilarious at all. And I think I’m only speaking for myself.

Because the ghost of an L word threatens to break through this canyon, melting on the tip of my tongue only to falter. And the word is not lip-ring.

So if all that needs to be said remains unsaid, it probably shouldn’t be said anyway.

At least not now.  Because between you and me, a kiss is just a kiss.

And there are no words for that.