We're on a dim rooftop at a high point in the city. Far below, the lights and signs glow in the distance like tiny needlepoints and vague neon rainbows. We're alone now, slipping away from a party. Everyone else either went to the street or balconies. I choose this out of impulse against my often calculated nature. 

The wind is cold and steady. I brush strands of auburn tinged hair from your face and you giggle, both because you're ticklish and it's one of the first times I've touched you. The smile lingers, lips curved, every breath an exhaled fog, but your eyes are intense orbs, a universe of stories and secrets hinted at but nowhere close to ready to be told yet because we're still at the very beginning. 

But it's like you gave me that glimpse on purpose, a silent vow saying that yes, it's the beginning, but I want you to know this is real, this is that raw time when it's all new and I want you to stay and maybe see who I am. Know who I am. Entwine with who I am. 

And even though that stare says so much, we dare not acknowledge it. 

Don't speak of this yet because we say the most by how we react to the wordless moments. And I want to say so much and equally shut the fuck up because I don't possess the eloquence needed to describe it as it happens. 

I don't think we're supposed to. 

It's the first time I learned that sharing such a moment with someone held a power that is consuming and all powerful, only rendered fragile by speaking aloud. 

And I have to still say something. In all that dim night and December wind, I feel like we're the only two people ever, out of the billions of people out there. t don't quite understand what ties people together and know too much about how they're pulled apart and that all has to mean something, but I don't know what yet. 

So my lips speak in their own way then, slowly but steadily leaning forward and your lips part so slightly and I breathe in an afterthought of sweet wine that has a faint strawberry scent. 

Our lips meet right as the first set of fireworks suddenly reach skyward and ignite and burst with a pop like soft thunder. Their colors flare with violent intensity and spread only moments before fading but as soon as one group dims, random spots in the clear sky sparkle and boom over and over, temporary heavenly rainbows shimmering and spreading and it makes me briefly wonder if that's what happens to all beautiful things. I wonder if the most beautiful things are so bright and unstable with energy that the only reasonable cycle they can have is short but all too vibrant.

But your taste takes me away from there, from that place I retreat to far too often when I begin to overanalyze everything.

And I realize that even though our kiss is soft, almost tentative as many firsts are, you're holding me so tightly that it almost hurts and I want to remember that pain. That pain mixed with the delicate ways our lips meet and caress and taste over and over and over. 

And I want to hold on to something that I've never felt until this night. How your lips are somehow eager and cautious all at once in exploration but your body is virtually clinging to mine. How you're almost trembling. How I immediately sense the feral heat emanating from between your legs and my body answers by helplessly pressing against you.

It's both so sweet and absolutely primal, the way a body can hold tight and say you belong to me and I belong to you, feel that beyond a doubt in the way my arms are clasped, in the way my body presses as if I know that if I press just hard enough, just hard enough to where we can't tell the difference between whose heart is drumming and whose veins are beating, we'll defy all anatomy and somehow merge into a singular being, never to be separate again. 

And no matter what happens from here, this is something we'll always get to hold on to.

We tasted one another, pressed against one another, as radiant rainbows were exploding across the winter sky. 

That will always be ours.