It's just a brief downward flicker, most of the time. A few inches. But enough for me to notice, and enough for her to notice, should she happen to be looking. So far, I think I've caught it in time. Caught myself in time.

Eyes to lips. Just a few inches of smooth skin, down a cheek, along the ridge of a nose. Physically, that distance is very small, but emotionally, it's vast.

Eyes may welcome and engage, but lips, they beckon.

---

Speaking of lips, I like this old entry from 2007:

I'm not really sure which was the first. I've got it narrowed down to two girls, two occasions, but the passage of time has blurred my memory to the point where I can no longer be certain about the order of things. Like, I'm pretty sure that I kissed both those girls after that comet killed all the dinosaurs, but I wouldn't want to bet anything substantial on it.

So I don't remember which was my first real kiss. But I do remember them both. They were passionate, each of them. And full of promises that neither of us was ready to keep. There was none of this sweet and gentle and perfunctory crap that I've been so wont to do lately. To show that I'm a good guy, at least at first. Back then, a kiss was all you were going to get, so you damn sure needed to make the best of it.

I'm pretty sure that I could remember all of my first kisses. I don't mean that I could list them right now off the top of my head, but if I thought about it long enough, I probably could. And if I heard a name or saw a face or had something like that come along to help jog my memory, then I definitely could.

I was thinking tonight about a few of my first kisses. From the drunken and playful and inevitable kiss of that night last Winter, to that fascinated experimental kiss a couple of weeks ago, to that romantic kiss in Las Vegas in June, to that initially timid kiss that somehow lasted an entire weekend in late 2004, to that incredible indefinable kiss a few months earlier that still makes me weak in the knees when I think about it.

I don't know why I've never written about kissing before. About lips. I've written about hands, and I've written about eyes, but not lips. I don't know why. Maybe, maybe kissing just seems too personal, even for me to write about. Maybe hand-holding and eye-gazing are just fine, but kissing belongs in the same realm as sex, and I never write about sex. Nobody wants to read about that - they only want to have it. Maybe kisses are the same way.

Anyway, I like kissing. It's my favorite. I just thought I'd share that little tidbit. You know, just in case anyone wants to make out or something.