FINALLY IS A FEELING

Finally is an ending word.

It’s last place turned most important.

Loud-mouthed commentator’s last breath phrase

before the game is over.

When I say this, I know that two things can be true at once:

There are three people in the car. 

You are with him.

You are also with me.

That’s the beginning and the end of it. 

Spring break on the beach,

Cold enough to lend me your sweatshirt.

His girl,

my lips.

The sand sticks to the spaces between our toes,

and the seashells prick our feet like Legos.

Sometimes, the suffering is bearable 

when you want it badly enough.

And I think, 

how can the end justify the means if we are boundless?

All I can say is finally, we move.

Finally, a kiss. 

Finally is an ending word, but for whom?

My finally looks like the bated breaths of two girls in a dorm room

The hesitation of a virgin

and the false pretenses of an eighteen-year-old romantic.

My finally is lost between secret sideways smiles and bitten tongues.

Finally is the opposite of all our almosts.

Finally is here, in the limes on your lips

and the brooding boy behind the fence.

It always happens in a series of moments, doesn’t it?

Life, I mean. 

And I don’t need to know what happens next.

The truth to magic is in the unknowing. 

Finally doesn’t care about the past,

or the timing,

or what it means. 

While how and when are deadlocked in a stalemate,

Finally is now, and it’s a beginning. 

So we stumble home.