Kisses

Some kisses are like chores
Others, like bores unimaginable from before love
Some kisses like ill-fitting shoes
Like games cut short, then resumed
There is not meant to be space between the curves of my lips
The tip of my tongue
And the shape of your desire
Now consume me
I didn’t say bite me
Kisses like dinner, like someone didn’t feed you
You want me
Don’t eat me
Don’t need me
Now kiss me
Like teaching
Like first kisses
In the back seat of a mini van
I held you
Kisses like breathing
Seventeen,
Jitterbugs run ‘round my head in green
A kiss that’s short but clean
I in her room with lips that played on mine like pawprints
Your tongue tastes like remembrance
Mocha smoothly runs down my chin and pools at our feet
We are soaked in the heat of the kiss and she says, no, not that far
I am gone.
You see, my first girlfriend
I could kiss her for hours
Back seat thunderbird, lonely parking lot again
An hour is gone in lips that tend to melt one to another
Her fingers on my side like they own it, gripping flesh that desires
There is nothing of air in kisses that burn the very enamel off our teeth
Glowing white to blind us from our own imperfections
And kisses cut short
Home at midnight
On prom night?
I am gone.
But kisses call from love’s broken vow
And I in her bedroom again, with satin running cross my cheek
Does this mean something?
Don’t speak, in our kiss there are words enough
For lifetimes remembered and forgotten
There are lives lived in the lostness of that first kiss
That last kiss, playing hearts with hearts that beat
I am gone

It is not 'til twenty-two that I recall
There are kisses that require their own absolution
Kisses that hold tight to music
That play on each note like they own it
Gripping tight to its side and slipping from the downbeat
Uplifted again
There is kissing that is like dancing
Like forgetting to begin
And forgetting to let end
There is kissing in him that remembers that I am whole without you
But wholer still within your mouth
There is forgetfulness in kisses that consume hours
Forgetting there is somewhere to be
There is nowhere to be, no climax, no letoff
No escape but kisses that amble round the dancefloor and exhaust even the orchestra
There are kisses in time that hold moments
Bringing you to the forefront of that moment
Just as weed puts you to the tail end
Moments begin, moment begin, moment begin
I am gone.
I live for kisses from your mouth
Dancing on my couch to “Will You Be There,” baby already there
There is completeness in your embrace and I forget that love could be so innocent
First kiss at twenty-two and no innuendo
I am let go to love like I loved myself
To love like I’m a normal person and this is my life. Now, come in.
Kissing is recreation but with you I celebrate
My mouth the party site, your eyes my invitation
And I just can’t imagine shutting the doors
When lips lock tight there is no hope for escape
No crowded rooms full of people I don’t know
But only you and me
Our bodies moving synchronously
Forgetting to let time forget that we are two
We are one and we rise and fall with the music
Which does not approach us but is in us
We are performing it
And we know the same song
I forgot to tell you that Jennifer Knapp taught me to pray
And you taught me to pray in communion
There is silence in our laughing there is laughing in my breaths,
I forget to breathe sometimes and breathe you instead,
Inhaling every bit of you to be remembered when you are gone
Like a team we rotate positions
Because hours fade on and my arms get tired
But I still laugh until I cannot breathe and
I cannot decide whether it is the music that is making me happy
Or the openness that you make possible
Beneath you I am open to be extracted and placed on an operating table
Know myself within you and make myself your mask
There is nothing of emptiness with you and yet
Inside I mean nothing but you and this kiss
I am gone.

Love in a kiss is love in material
Affection born strong to remember its grounds in the physical
I kiss you because I remember your name but couldn’t bear to speak it
Because verbal communication necessitates separation
And your voice calls to me from within
I breathe through you to know that the air that I breathe is not for me alone
It is only this kiss that generates our sameness
Only the kiss that tells me your eyes hold the promise of my existence
In your kiss I am blind to realities where I exist and you do not
For in the economy of the kiss you equals I
Equals you equals I
And there is no sight to be met where all I see is myself in your eyes
The endless mirroring of vision that plays out already inside my head
In you I am reflected and able to know myself from without
Your fingers in your dark hair my hands on my own back
There is no shame in the love of the same
When the same is you
A kiss that melts one into two and calls them me
I kiss you because I could not otherwise know what it meant to be.