First Love

I'm not sure anymore if the gap was between his upper or lower front teeth but when he sang while playing the guitar it was apparent we were all in love with the vowels his lips blew into being like small suns whose warm rays we let darken our olive skins one time he played next to the fire and I improvised a song and the classmates clapped and I think he smiled at me and my mind weaved a full destiny and a lineage with a stone mansion and a vineyard he's some sort of plastic surgeon now and so I'm not sure if he kept the gap in his teeth or ever thinks back to that night by the fire.

how the body begs a new language stuttering flesh rash to my name I learned tenderness from air a trembling syllable before every handshake your breath drew meter on my ribs I transcribed our silence into punctuation to live once more in a breathless line