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Your Wonton Lips

By Arwen-Wynter Oakley 2023

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I tasted you in passing, like one might taste a fresh morning breeze or warm espresso. I tasted you again. It was addicting to my curious mouth. Your cherub cheeks – a delightful playing field for lips to pioneer.

Her cosmic eyes withheld the secrets of her telling smile. A smirk flashed during the landrace to her warm lips – playful and light.

The potato-flavored oil held fast to the edges of her smile. She did not shy away from my face. She did not shy away at all.

“Let me get that,” she whispered, “looks like the eggroll got you, too.”

Her slender beige fingers encircled a small grease mark upon the lapel of my worn sports jacket. “AH” in varsity lettering branded my shoulders – it was as if we were young again. Young and stupid. When the chaperones babysat the punchbowl and guarded the way to beneath the bleachers.

We giggled in the golden glow illuminating the seeing side of the deciduous perimeter. Our secrets danced in the floodlight’s reach as if corralled in this moment. Beyond the light, these bounds, secrets become false memories. Moments spent in places that cannot be spent elsewhere.

“Your lips, they taste like wontons.”

We laughed and we laughed.