We kissed.
Well I kissed you and then we took off. We kissed twice that night. Long kisses in the middle of a parking lot. Long kisses and lip bites. Chicago.

I kissed you in an effort to tie up loose ends. I kissed you so that I'd put the wondering to rest. I was a scientist you see. I had to analyze what your lips felt like, research the taste of your mouth.

I wanted to breath you. I didn't know if that was even possible but I was just conducting an experiment. It wasn't supposed to last. It wasn't supposed to be replicated. It was just an experiment.

I was kissing you to leave you.

Intending for our first kiss to be our kiss goodbye.

Then I flew home the next day and we didn't speak for three weeks. I didn't know that my research would ruin me. That I'd think about your lips obsessively for days. That I'd hate myself for the constant oscillations of you through my thoughts.

I wasn't prepared.

Then we talked. I found out you were too drunk to even remember the kiss. I was upset but I laughed instead. I pretended to be disgusted when I told you that you had tasted like cigarettes and alcohol. But really, I was disgusted with myself for liking everything about the kiss - including the taste of you and everything on your breath.

I've come to realize I was not a researcher that night. I was a fool. A fool who thought a first kiss with a long time crush would tie up loose ends. I ******* nothing that night. Instead I had taken the sharpest scissors I could have found and initiated the greatest unraveling of sanity my 22 year old self had ever endured.

Why did I have to kiss you? I should have walked away. Hell, I should have run away like the very ground near you was on fire. Because while I've thought about you every single day since I've left, I know I likely haven't graced your imagination. Our brains are spinning very different memories.

That's the thing about memories though. Two people can be in the exact same place, at the exact same time, and have completely different recollections of the events. For me, our kiss is a memory that I've turned over in my hands, again and again. Just when I think I'm safe, when I think I've examined every aspect, I find a jagged edge and I'm cut once again.

I cannot keep re-dressing new wounds.

For you though, our kiss is a hazy, sun faded piece of paper. A second thought. IF that.

A paper so insignificant, it's recall isn't worth the effort. Who cares what the faded ink once read.

I should have never become a researcher.