Aaron M. Fortkamp

It’s that feeling in your tummy. Not your stomach, I said your tummy, pay attention. 

Think back. You can remember.

Sort of like one of those roller coasters that takes you over a negative-g hill, except there’s no movement, no motion involved, you’re holding still, and that dissonance between the stillness of your body and the movement of your innards makes the sensation bloom, makes it spread, up into your chest, up your neck, into your ears, fast as a blush. It makes you gasp, except at the very same moment it takes your breath away, the summed result being more of a goldfish maneuver, lips open and closing, no air passing through. Chills are not unheard of. The fine hairs prickle and sway.

It makes your hands sweat. Lubricates your palms. Why on earth does it make your hands sweat? What evolutionary significance could that possibly have, much less advantage? 

What starts in your tummy then lingers in your head. Perhaps from the lack of oxygen, you start to go a bit spacey, things move into and out of focus, assuming you’ve managed to keep your eyes open.

What is it, hormones? Is this the feeling of a specific hormone? Or just the flood of dopamine or serotonin or one of their cousins? It’s unmistakably a chemical, a drug, of sorts, spreads through both your nervous system and your blood stream, both fast and not so fast, it hits quick and spreads slower and lingers longer if you acknowledge it and call it out, look it dead in the eye, and enjoy it.

It pinches your eyebrows together. Whimper face. 

You know what causes it. Think back.

Legit tremors through and through, all of your limbs and digits, when the source of all this approaches. They are perfect. How could they not be, they haven’t done anything yet, whether to prove or disprove, and your body says Ah-ha! Proof! The absence of proof is proof! They’ve given off hints, suggestions, signs, but the actions are still on the other side of the horizon, and gravity takes a rain check and fucks off out the window with a smile and a wave like it’s doing you a favor. You start to float. If you don’t make any sudden movements you stay floating in place, confused, up is down is left is back, downways is sideways, cats are dogs, mass hysteria. The only directional certainty is the source. You can gauge their distance by the intensity of your existential dissonance. When they are all but touching you, you achieve simultaneity. Your skin senses inways and outways, you taste what you hear, happy and sad are one. 

But the kiss. But the kiss.

Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.

How does it go? Is it wet, is it dry? Is it mouth open, I mean it can’t be totally closed, can it? But which lips touch where? Top to top, bottom to bottom? No, can’t be so symmetrical, but then again you don’t want to wind up sucking on her nose, do you, you’ve got to have a plan, got to have some limits, what happened to transcendence, what happened to that nirvanic enlightenment, is this part of it, have you breached the event horizon of knowledge and wound up back at the other pole again?

Perhaps it’s magnets. Perhaps it’s all about the poles. Maybe you don’t know because you don’t need to know. Perhaps it’s a quantum entanglement, a curve through space-time, the sudden revenge of gravity that will pull you to the right place even in the dark of night, where you will stick together like molecules with barely a word between you, maybe all you have to do is fall, and you’ll be there. Right there. Right where you need to be.

Pay attention.