吻
My debut kiss was when a Taiwanese girl
taught me her tongue in a cold parking lot, where
losing my tenth-grade cowardice in the swirl
of snow outside a clubhouse; her face, I dared.
In Chinese, the character for kiss sounds like when.
If its seven black strokes form a picture of us, then
the hut on the left holds her peach-filled night
and I am the rake thing approaching from the right.
When is the time frame this picture hangs within—
when two kids with numb lips, blinking
in the snow drifts, trying to speak open the door in
the other, begin—how the translation keeps trying
to stick its tongue in my mouth, to steal another
when, when… when our words came so close to each other.
Samir Firas Atassi is an Arab American poet from the Northeast Ohio region who’s been writing for over twenty years. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ashland University, and his work has appeared in various publications, including River Teeth Online, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Ghazal Page. He currently lives and works as a librarian in North Olmsted, Ohio.