Rita's Kiss Poem by David Watts

Rita's Kiss
We'd like to think what happens in the dark
is real, that shadow
is just the light's rearrangement of a difficult truth.
—split fragment
Rita almost kissed me when the lights
went out.I was thirteen.
She thought about it, but chickened out.
Her telling me later was the offering
of a gift I didn't get.Flooded, then,
by the immensity of what I'd lost,
my heartache made me want her
all the more, want her
to try again, lips searching the dark behind
a cooperative light switch.I was way too timid
to ask.The dark, porous only briefly
to the release of desire, closed
when the lights came on.
The opportunity missed
would not have been so painful
if not announced.
But she announced.Excitement
and disappointment the virtues we shared
like jam on stale toast.
Some might say we were cubs
playing at the pale reflection of love, too young
for it to mean much more.But her kiss,
not given,
made us spectators of ourselves,
the watched image the only part of it
that was true.Silence came then.
And the air moved like the sludge of sorrow
when all I had of her was a little light, a little dark,
and just the idea of her kiss.