Your tongue tastes like the pumpkin curry we just split at the Laotian restaurant. My breath smells like the cinnamon Tic Tac I popped into my mouth when I excused myself from the table and walked to the bathroom, slightly weak-kneed and quavery from lust and a single Thai beer. All I had to do was turn to you, there on the sidewalk by the lit glass window of the restaurant, and your mouth was on mine, your arms around me.

We stood there, entwined, two middle-aged people on a third date, kissing in the darkness, alone, but surrounded by the ex-wife you no longer speak with, my 7-year-old daughter at home with the babysitter, our aging mothers, my dead father, your father alive and still married to the parish secretary he ran off with back when you were 12, my ancient golden retriever, your kitchen, gutted with no running water, our various jobs and dreams and anxieties, our 401(k)s, our cars which need oil changes, the dental exams we both should schedule.

We kiss and we kiss, your hand cool under my sweater until I say wait, where do we go? And you say you don’t know. Still, you pick up the jacket you dropped on the sidewalk when we first reached for each other, and we begin to walk down the street.

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Alison Seevak writes and teaches in Albany.

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