KIERSTEN VAN HORNE
The first time someone else’s tongue enters your mouth.
The first time a child trusts you to carry them to the next room.
The first time you drive safely from Westfield, Massachusetts, to San Diego with someone you’re in love with.
The first time you watch birth.
The first lines of Paradise Lost.
The first time you make a decisive three point shot in a game that really counts.
The first time you get the dog to shit outside.
The first time you can read “I love you” in a lover’s eyes.
The first time you sleep in after fucking all night long.
The first family reunion without homicidal fantasies.
The first love letter.
The first serious talk about love with your child.
The first time you contemplate suicide and change your mind.
The first hangover.
The first arrest.
The first acquittal.
The first epiphany.
The first time you hear Lorca in Spanish.
The first real friendship with a person of another race.
The first gray hair.
The first time you see Picasso’s Guernica.
The first time you visit your birthplace.
The first time you hear Lightning Hopkins.
The first visible comet.
The first time you feel attractive and someone calls you “angel.”
The first experience with something remotely like a god.
The first recovery after a serious illness.
The first beer with your father.
The first time therapy makes sense.
The first birthday of your first born.
The first time you can’t walk and your lover carries you to the next room.
The first foul ball you catch in Fenway Park.
The first time you stand alone and you’re scared to death and you don’t change your position.
The first time you’re convinced of your mortality and you laugh.
The first sunrise after the first death of a parent.
The first time you forgive the unforgivable.
The first time you see the Earth from space.
The first time it is truly obvious that it was better that you had lived, at this time, in this world.
The first time you decide every moment of your life should be a work of art.
The first time you die and you breathe again and you speak to the living.
The first time you realize that it all just might have been okay.
 
 
(The people in the space look up at the silent sky around them. They wait.
No revelations come to them. No answers. No giant bolts of lighting.
Just a slow fade to black.)
 
 
THE END