It didn’t really happen. I was awkward, a sloppy crocheting of clumsy hands. I was scared of my body; or maybe, I was scared of her body. Foreign, but bright from the veil of curtains slighting a late spring light. I kissed like a maniac, but when it came down to the business of pleasure, I could not make a transaction. She later told me I could have gone on longer than my half-a-minute slow grind before I chickened out. Even now, after my fifth major relationship and plenty of romping and dancing atop mattresses mine and not mine, I feel my first **** is how I approach love. Tentative, too contemplative, and none-so-bold. Perhaps it is because I learned early, to hate myself, this body that is still so new to me: twenty-five years owned and I still don’t know how to love myself. I just hope that one day, I will be that light streaming into the room, touching everything around it, feeling with tender warmth the goodness of what soon hinders its path casting shadows behind what I come to kiss.