At a Sausalito gallery, 
Javier reads his poems
of darkness and lost kisses,
besos, he says, explaining 
how the literal translation
is kisses, but besos are different.
I ask what’s missing for him in kisses,
and he says, The Spanish,

making me think of Spanish
conjugation, its preterite tense,
where an action has a clear end,
and the imperfect, where an action
keeps on, like my first kiss
as I lay in the back of a dirty van,
and a boy loosed his tongue
in my mouth, and my tongue,

no longer innocent, leapt
like an animal from its cave,
my lips opening wide,
in snarling contact with every bit 
of his mouth, discovering nerves
in my tongue were hot-wired
down my body’s long center

to those mysterious lips below
clenching and slickening
as we kissed. 
He tasted of rum and sweat,
and I tangled my bitten-to-the-quick
fingernails in his dark curls
and held on, as our mouths
swelled and bruised.

I never kissed him again but stood quietly
a few weeks later, as he was beaten
at our bus stop, his sweet, surprised face
kicked by another boy’s boot.
A group of us watched as blood seeped
from his nose and mouth.
When he lay, limp and still, we
and that other boy walked away,

and I failed to recognize how a moment 
could continue, like the Spanish imperfect,
and what later turned up missing 
for me in kisses was not ever
a language, but the taste of rum 
lingering like memory
in someone’s mouth, and a body,
laid out, unable to resist.