It's okay. I brush my hair. I can listen. I hear the cars that have replaced the crickets and frogs.

I light. I **** in smoke. Hold. Exhale.

I always plan how I'm going to kiss someone I'm seeing, and it never works out like I think it will.
I mull over plots and tricks and pick up lines. I smile, giggle, and have conversations with imaginary figures by myself--on a bus, in my kitchen, in the shower. I noticed one day my Dad does that too.

But planning for the kiss. Versus the actual situation of the kiss.
I haven't gotten to use the move that I want to, where I try and give someone a palm reading in a cute and enchanting manner and then I seem to fumble. I "forget" what to say, I bite my lip and look shyly at them, telling them it's hard to concentrate and "I seem to have forgotten what comes next because it is very overwhelming being in such close proximity to someone so. . . cute". Then I'd giggle and blush.

I swear it would work, but in the situation where I had planned to use it, well. . .

We were sitting on my old apartment's couch, making dumb jokes about this berry juice I was drinking because the ****** tension was practically palpable. He took the juice bottle from me.

"Beet juice." he remarked casually, examining the ingredient list.
"That must be why it's red," I said, "The natural dyes in beets."

Then I looked at him and he looked at me. Then Jesus-*******-Christ, that set off a chain of events.
But beet juice. Really? Really?

But.

What happens in my head versus real life.

It's both nice and exciting, but it's always disappointing when I have to throw out a box of memories another person and I never shared. Gritty and distorted, I had imagined us (so many us's) laughing with warm and tanned skin, freckled shoulders and a night where we both look at the stars sitting somewhere cold, and nervous. Accidentally bumping hands in a manner reminiscent of most starts of young, summer love.

I can't remember the last time I looked at the stars with someone.

I can only remember one clear night in July.

But, I can't remember the last time I got a warm, unexpected kiss from someone who made my belly flip once-over, twice and my cheeks blush. Who made me look sideways, shyly.

I know it might come again, one day. But I have to be patient, and that is not easy. I don't want to finish, because this is unfinished with a pointed effort of not concluding with poignancy.
I don't want a flourish at the end because I haven't ended this thought yet.