It is a strange thing, isn’t it —
that when language runs out of breath,
we press our breath into each other anyway.

Who invented this?

Honestly.

Who was the first trembling cave-person
to stare into another pair of terrified prehistoric eyeballs and think:

You know what would really clarify my emotional availability? Face proximity. Aggressive face proximity.

Like your skull and my skull colliding gently
while our noses stand awkwardly off to the side
like divorced parents at a school recital.

Kissing, at its core, is completely ridiculous.

It’s two nervous systems trying to file a merger
through a series of increasingly damp negotiations.

It’s two haunted houses
trying to switch on the porch light
inside each other.

It’s two mouths —
those fragile suitcases
packed with grief, gum, childhood, hunger,
and the names we almost said—
trying to smuggle souls across the border.

It’s two mammals forgetting every survival instinct
in the name of maybe if I get closer, I will finally be translated correctly.

It’s teeth politely stepping aside like ushers at a wedding
where no one is certain which side belongs to sorrow
and which side belongs to joy.

It’s tongues negotiating terms like tiny diplomats of desire,
all of them terrible at paperwork,
all of them saying yes before the treaty is even written.

It’s the spine going soft.

It’s time removing its shoes at the edge of the bed and whispering,

I can wait.

It is the heart, who is normally such a disciplined employee,
always arriving early,
always wearing its little badge that says circulation specialist,
suddenly running through the office with scissors and caffeine, shouting,

I have misunderstood the assignment beautifully!

It is every alarm in the body mistaking tenderness for fire
and deciding, somehow, to burn anyway.

And yes, super strange.

Yes, wildly absurd.

Yes, it really is two faces trying to become one permission slip.

But also: what else have we ever wanted?

To be this close and not disappear.

To be met at the trembling edge of our animal loneliness by another animal
also brave enough to be embarrassing.

Because what are we really doing when we kiss?

We are saying:

Here.
Here is the breath I have been saving inside my one wild life.

Take some.
I am tired of surviving alone.

“This Kiss”
24x24 Oil and Acrylic on Canvas