Before the First Kiss

a nonfictional book of poetry about the right love at the wrong time.

“More poetry has been written about love and specifically, the loss of love than perhaps anything else. This book, in a brutally beautiful way, is what happens when the person you’ve lost, writes back. From London to Texas to Atlanta, from couches to bars to the floor, Ashe Vernon and Trista Mateer have written something together that is not quite a novel, almost a memoir, still a poetry book - and yet entirely something else. A raw, painfully honest and beautiful documentation of the space between two people.”
– Iain S. Thomas, author of I Wrote This For You

“Before the First Kiss is a beautiful tapestry of two interlocking narratives, it illustrates how love and dance are not as different as we think. They both require us to throw caution to the wind and feel something so deeply that our bodies begin to speak for themselves.”
– Rudy Francisco, author of No Gravity



“This collection is intimacy: stripped down and insecure; swollen with urgency. A relationship is dissected in front of us – built up and busted down without a lick of grace, but stunning in words. Vernon and Mateer break more hearts than their own with these poems.”
– Rachel Nix, poetry editor at cahoodaloodaling