I want to locate a bit of you, cradle it,
say: this, there is no word for this.

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest
satellite dish in the universe, your smile
as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,
how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I’ve been ignored by prettier women than you,
but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence
so far, without spilling a drop.

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love?

When you’re sixteen it’s easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The “we
shouldn’t be doing this” kiss. The “but your lips
taste so good” kiss. The “bury me in an avalanche of tingles” kiss.
The “I wish you’d quit smoking” kiss.
The “I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes” kiss. The “I know
your tongue like the back of my hand” kiss.

As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s
red door just to see how it fits. Oh, where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don’t invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don’t water the kiss with whiskey.
It’ll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The “I do” kiss.
The “I’ll love you through a brick wall” kiss.

Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.

I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.

Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.