I know about first love

I’ve been there and I can tell you
exactly what it’s like.  For sure you
hoped she’d be someone special, the one, and
wow it turns out she was.  It’s nice to find
she knows as little about the romance ropes as you,
you both learning how the lasso loops, in the same new spot.
The first time you hold hands, it’s a sweatier experience
than you prayed it wouldn’t be, how you prayed everything would be right,
like a new religion that’s come on stunning you, a first true lover’s kiss
that beats your heart so fast, you think somehow
you’ve gone deaf and maybe blind, but it’s no problem,
and neither is the fact that you can’t breathe. Paralyzed,
a suspended animation, so how then does the world spin faster
than it ever spun before, so odd with this that time
somehow stands still, how all clocks stop, and the only thing
you know right while it’s happening is that you know now what
kissing’s all about.  How you’ve done it right, for first time,
one singularly mastered kiss that even now after fifty years
so striking you remember how it shook your knees
as it shakes them right this minute, the same, and funny
how now you know what could break your heart,
unlike any heart ever broken before or since, so many
tiny pieces you can’t count them, grains of sand
running since that time through an emptying hour glass
that counts you down, alas, how we all sometimes
fuck up, you know, but hope someday soon you’ll at last be okay.