Kiss Me Quick

I'm sexy, by definition. I think I have what they call a ‘pear-shaped' figure — is that what you find alluring? Perhaps it's my slim neck, maybe my lips — a little thin, but no less inviting.

Here, come wrap your hands around my waist. I'll warm; you'll shiver — hopefully with anticipation. I've waited a long time for you: a week feels like a year when you're travelling the distance in the back of a truck. What's a few days between friends, lovers?

Too many, I hear you say, but while you've missed me, you've had my cousins, my brothers, my sisters. Are we all the same? I'd be offended if you said so. We have our differences. I'm more brazen, sharper, really, so I hear. Perhaps I was sheltered a little longer; maybe I'm not as mature as I'd like to think. I hear perfection comes with maturation.

It feels good, to be with you now. When I'm stacked between the bodies of the others, caught up between the bickering and the complaints that come from too many of us crammed in those wretchedly small spaces, I think of you. When I'm stuck between an egotistical Brut and a Penfolds' namesake, and it's a competition all the way from our once-peaceful retreat of Stanthorpe to the dingy backroom of the drive-throughs, I wait for you.

It doesn't matter who takes me from the cold steel shelves of the refrigerated cabinets. The less time I'm there, hoping my label is still intact, and the glass doesn't frost to a point of obscuring me, hoping that even though it's winter, the patrons feel like indulging in a beautiful chardonnay, not a sweet oak red, the more I feel like it's you who really wants me.

You, who reaches in, touches me in that moment of decision, and knows I'll be everything you've looked forward to tonight.

Even if you don't remember who I am in the morning, what I was to you.

Here, pull my cork, kiss me quick.