This collision of teeth, of tongues and lips,
is like feeling for the door
in a strange room, blindfolded.
He imagines he knows her
after four dates, both of them taking pains
to laugh correctly, to make eye contact.
She thinks at least this long first kiss
postpones the moment she'll have to face
four white walls, the kitchen table,
its bowl of dried petals and nutmeg husks,
the jaunty yellow vase with one jaunty bloom,
the answering machine's one bloodshot eye.
April Lindner is the author of
three young adult novels: Love, Lucy, a retelling of A Room With a View;
Catherine, a contemporary retelling of Wuthering Heights; and Jane, a retelling
of Jane Eyre, all published by Poppy/Little, Brown Young Reader.
She is also a poet, with two collections in print: This Bed
Our Bodies Shaped, from Able Muse Press, and Skin, winner of the Walt McDonald
First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press. She teaches writing at Saint
Joseph's University in Philadelphia.