Thursday Afternoon

“But you’re not supposed to know,” he said.
“Yeah,” I sighed,
“but I just want to know a little,
like when you get a new book and you read the last page.
You know what the last page is going to be like,
but you don’t know the whole story;
you only have a little idea.”
He followed me to the bathroom, where I
started flossing my teeth, and he kissed me.
I let the white floss fall in my hand.
It was a good kiss,
not those quick kisses of good-bye when he leaves for work,
or the sloppy kisses when you are both
too busy to care how your mouth feels.
It was the kind of kiss that makes you
remember why you started kissing him in the first place.
And all at once you are not so afraid to grow old.