The first time

I’ll keep this day, hands bound under floorboards of memory. In a locked room, too scared to open, until the curve of your neck gave me courage. This moment - a defining event...a civil war won, the fall of Vicksburg, there will only ever be a before and after this coming together.

Today we abandon our parent’s perception of normal for this sacred unfolding.

Fumbling fingers, nervous giggles, the tracing of you. Tranquil afternoon light reaching through curtains, waiting to be discovered in triangles across your breast.

The hem of the sounds we make together, stitch the fabric of our discovery and our revelation. My mouth, and yours. We pull this blanket of permission around us.

Reading poetry over naked bodies, I think Neruda must have felt this too.

You write sonnets about mathematics, and I silently thank Euclid for geometry. The bend of your hips. The arch of my back. Congruent angles have heartbeats now.

You teach me that touching isn’t the closest you can get to someone. But we try, and try, and again. We push against each other, your energy under pressure, trapped too long. Unarmored, unmoored, unleashed.

No one can judge us here, these hours will disappear like incense smoke but the scent will linger for days.

We dance with every childhood question and find one answer in our rhythm - this is who we were all along.

Shame is waiting and we know it. Our practice in connection is safe if we stay just like this. And we do.

How do other people survive this chaos?

Contrition can take us tomorrow. But for now you grasp my cheek, there is a reaching around of arms. Your lips find my ear - a magnet. We shift on top of open notebooks, pages creasing, tearing, and we let them.

Through my hair you whisper simply…”more”

___________________

A lot of firsts are clumsy, dripped in anxiety and overthinking. This one was solely driven by curiosity, radical acceptance, and bold exploration. I wish the same experience for everyone.

When I was writing this I was taken back to that day - I still smell the detergent on my bedsheets mixed with her perfume and shampoo. My body still holds a visceral response for this moment from over 10 years ago. It's weird how bodies remember. They store all of our moments in card catalogs to be flipped through every now again.

This was the first step I took into my queerness. No dipping my toes in. A profound and massive cannonball into the deep end, (although when I found my life partner that was a different story) with reckless confidence that I knew how to swim. I did. I do.

Eventually this exploration in love and lust ended, you can read about that here. But I still think of her often.

I wonder what she's up to now. I've forbidden myself to go and look. I wonder if she thinks on that time as fondly as I do, and if it shaped her in the way it shaped me. There are many hands that go into the making of a life, her fingerprint is visible to this day.

With this submission I offer a cheers: to those who run and jump into the deep end and worry about the water temperature later; to those who dip their toe in and wade in slowly; to those who have befriended their queerness and wear it now as a badge of honor; and those who are working on finding a place for the exquisite majesty of their sexuality and or gender. May you find home as I have in whatever way is meant for you, and may the journey be gentle.