Mouthfuls

as if we never have before. as if we’ve forgotten how it reverberates in the split-second after letting go. in the salt grass after sunset, on the red line train two stations from the end, one thousand feet above sea level looking west from the top of the world; among the concrete swathes of Millbrae, in the back of the cab coming home from the party where we’ve just made our public debut, the driver keeping the dome light on the whole way there, but we’ve already begun and I forget to care. it’s the night I make it to the quarter-century; at the time you don’t know this, but your hand gentles the back of my head as the car swerves and neither of us buckle our seat-belts. as if you’re holding yourself back. as if one day you’ll show me what you really like. my hand climbing the sharp side of your jaw, searching for the blades beneath your stubble, as if I’m keeping the bridle on my soul, as if one day I’ll show you what I’m really like. the day you first touched me, an hour before we’d even found the trailhead, you asked whether my language had separate names for mouth and lips or if it was all the same. I said mouth is interior and lips are exterior but regardless my mother tongue only has the single noun. I’d like to tell you now that despite all the illogic of English I love that mouth is also a verb, the charm you cast on my fingers coasting your lips, the prayer I pressed against your throat that day at the top of the world. and the first time, on the rocks at Point Lobos, nothing west but gleaming ocean, I looked up and there was nothing behind you but blue, your eyes like nebulae burning through the ether, in freefall between salt air and everlasting water, and we could still have run then, but instead we leaned in, again and then again.

Lalini Shanela Ranaraja makes art in a wilderness of places, most recently Katugastota (Sri Lanka), Rock Island (Illinois) and the California Bay Area. They have written about defiant women, red-tailed hawks, best beloveds, mothertongues and luminous worlds for Wildness, Hunger Mountain Review, Strange Horizons and others. Discover more of their work at http://www.shanelaranaraja.com.

A Song for Lalini