I've dreamed about it a thousand times, imagined the feel of your lips caressing mine a dozen more. To experience the trust and intimacy that is felt between two people during the simple act of kissing. It is much more than that, however. It is everything and nothing all at the same time; it is hope and fear, excitement and anxiety, pleasure and pain, desire and control. I dream of your kiss, the slowness with which you moved your lips on top of mine, how you wrapped your arm around me, unknowingly aware of the support I needed. The feel of your heartbeat against my hand. If I was asked everyday for the rest of my life what was the best kiss I've ever had, I wouldn't need to think, only to remember that night in my door and the overwhelming pleasure I felt afterwards. I need only remember the smile that wouldn't leave my face for days, the anticipation of another such kiss happening. I will be 90, telling my great-grandchildren about that kiss and the emotion it evoked inside of me. That is what made this kiss so special, I think, the friendship and trust I felt prior to the kiss. The comfort and inhibition I experienced, and lack of needing anything more than what we had, is what made that kiss so magical.

That night, as you walked away from my door, I closed it quickly, so as to contain the girlish giggling and squealing I couldn't help but to let it out. I had never been kissed so precisely, so passionately before. I can't speak for what it made you feel or how you felt during the kiss, but for me, that kiss spoke volumes on how I perceived myself, others, and, most importantly, love. I had decided that if I could only ever receive those kisses from someone, never speaking to them, seeing them, interacting with them in any way, I could easily, so very easily, fall in love. That's the type of kiss every girl should get the opportunity to experience in her lifetime, soul-wrenching, toe-curling, gasp-inducing, and mind-melting. A kiss so passionate and heartfelt and present that the whole world melts away, and it's only you two locked in your embrace. Anything could've happened in the seconds, minutes, that transpired during that kiss, and I wouldn't have cared less.

I had never though such a kiss ever existed, or if it did, it only lived inside of cheesy romance novels and scripted rom-coms. And then I experienced it for myself and it was like the ground had opened up, the heavens had descended, and the stars had all aligned. I have yet to be kissed like that by any other man again, and I pray that whoever I spend the rest of my life with can kiss me with half as much passion as that one kiss held. If not, I thank my lucky stars I was one of the few people who knew what it truly felt like to be wanted, craved, even adored for those few minutes. I am a romantic but I am also a realist, and I had no intention of feeling the way I did going into that kiss. I had no expectations, no hopes, because guys before had taught me not to have any, and I was deliciously surprised and refreshed to have experienced such a kiss that night. Now every guy I give the luxury of letting kiss me, never lives up to that kiss, cannot compete with someone they do not know and never will. Perhaps, as I've said, it was the building up to that kiss that made it so much more. With the world we live in nowadays, guys don't care to wait for any sort of buildup or teasing, preferring to taste the fruit before it's had the chance to ripen, spoiling the experience.

Even now, alone and in my bed on this July night, I think of that kiss and I get chills and goosebumps, my heart going a mile a minute and my brain so desperate to recreate it, that I need to close my eyes. Everything that had happened up until that point seemed so minuscule in comparison, every bad thing fading away to a distant memory I no longer feel pain from. I believe that every person comes into your life to teach you a lesson, whether good or bad, or great or small. You taught me how to believe in hope and romance, and never to settle for less than what I crave and deserve, to feel and react and live. Your kiss is forever burned into my mind, a constant reminder of something pure and sweet and real.

"It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it."-- Christian Nestell Bovee