Kiss Like You Mean It

When you kiss someone, kiss them with both hands, kiss them like you are holding on tight and won’t let go. Lean in for the kiss like you are both in a musical and the score is swirling around you — as if your dress or her dress or both of your dresses will be blown up by the wind at any moment. Pretend you are like people who are holding each other after a long war is over and peace has been declared and you are being photographed in black and white. Kiss them like it’s going to be hung on someone’s wall someday, as a reminder of what love can be like.

When you kiss someone, don’t church kiss them, unless it’s the kind of kissing you do when you sneak into the confessional booth after hours. Give every part of your mouth to the kiss, but try not to eat their face because you want to have some of their face left to kiss later. Do not swallow their tongue because you’ll need it to let them explore the parts of your mouth that most kisses miss. Put your hands on their neck or use your hands to caress their hair (without them feeling like they are being strangled), like their body is being pulled into the kiss, and they just might fall inside of your face. Kiss them like every neuron inside of you is firing at the same time, every cell inside of you has suddenly sprung to attention and every part of you is consenting to this moment.

When you kiss someone, check your breath, check your heart and check to make sure you come back up for air. Move your lips together, slowly and passionately, like you are a moving sensually over a violin, but then don’t be afraid to kiss them more forcefully — and even bite a little, as long as it doesn’t turn into bloopers from 50 Shades of Grey. Don’t just kiss their mouth: put your lips on their ears, their face, their cheeks and a bunch of places that your mother never told you you were allowed to kiss people. Tell them how much they deserve to be kissed and that you wish you had the ability to kiss them every second of the day, in every place they need to be loved, in all the places no one has ever kissed them. Kiss them like you are just kissing them for the first time, and if you are kissing them for the first time, don’t forget how much that first moment means to you and remember it so you can tell stories about it later.

When you kiss someone, put your arms around them and hold them tightly, especially if you are to re-create that scene from Spider-Man, because in real life, you would probably fall down and die. Pretend you are kissing in the rain, the snow, the sleet, the hail, the tornado or are in a Shakira video and kissing under a waterfall on a remote tropical island. Embrace them like you aren’t too tired to kiss them or to remember how much people need even the smallest touch sometimes, those tiny reminders of human connection that we live for.

Forget that your mouths are both filled with booze or coffee or that you have a million other things on your mind. Kiss them like this is the moment you’ve been waiting for all night or waiting for all of your life.

When you kiss someone, close your eyes tightly and give yourself to the moment, but don’t be afraid to open them for just a second to look at the person you are kissing and think how lucky you are. Think about how wonderful it is just to be kissed and to linger in someone’s embrace without needing to pull away and how grateful you are to know that feeling of not needing to be anywhere else in the world. Touch them like you aren’t taking even the smallest token of affection for granted and like it might be the last time they ever kiss you. Make believe that you are going away to prison tomorrow or act like you are in a doomed romance and they are being married off to the Sultan of Brunei or the Butcher Lazar Wolf. Kiss them like that doesn’t matter. Kiss them like rest of the world doesn’t matter. Kiss them like you mean it.