Forgotten Firsts

You begin to wonder- can moments, lapses in time so beautiful and unique and all yours, be repeated in a different time, a different place, with someone new.
Can feelings- sensations so sudden and overwhelming, be felt in different contexts.
Can she feel the hot water on her skin, the smooth surface of yours against her own.
The rain above as I begged you to kiss me, just once, like the movies.
Your heartbeat under her right ear.
Dizziness, from laughter and loud music as the tires crunch asphalt below us.

Can these moments, these firsts and beginnings, be replaced.
Are you used to the words "I love you" yet.
Does it seem routine now to hold someone's hand, to stroke their arm.
I often wonder- do old words get erased by new stories.
Do old chapters lose value as one gets closer to the anticipated end.
The first valentine you handed me in school, between rows of lockers, our innocence knowing nothing yet of what would come.
The first kiss; a mesh of lips as I stood on tiptoes with haste.

I look back on memories from when I was five.
They're hazy now, jumbled together and out of order, a line of fog withholding my ability to distinguish specific faces, dates, and emotions.
The important ones, although still remotely unclear, will always remain.
Outlines of my baby-sitters, trips to the park, math tests, birthdays, deaths, births, friendships, and laughter. I can color them in however I'd like but the silhouette is forever engrained in my mind.

I hope it is the same with moments. Our moments.
Adding more pages to a book does not take away from the beginning, the foundation, the start, the place where the rest of the story stems from.
I hope our feelings could lead to ones you may feel now.
No memory can ever be fully replicated. Nor can I.
As a book begins with chapter one, you began with me.