Stolen Kiss

Time can always have blue,
the night star,
the white anchor above my head.

But not my heart
or my feet that leave the cobblestone
to jump into your embrace.

I curse time!

I want the weight of you.
Not just your hand like a delicate shadow
on my belly.

Not just your open mouth on mine,
your scruff on my neck,
no, this won’t do.

I don’t want pieces of you.

I want the cool finger of vision,
your hands down my spine,
our bodies wading shallow,

naked in a reflective pool.
Like two puddles coming together,
the meniscus of our

crescent shape
droplets
returning from the waterfall.

On your lips I tell you this,

taste our stolen kiss.
You don’t hear me
through the rush.

A Place to Curl Into

Recently I found a dead mouse
in the toe of my son’s ice skate. No, I’m sorry,
dead isn’t the word for it: Decomposed.

Forgiven any semblance of a life form or body, just

Dark, downy fur in tufts and
tiny, white dollhouse bones. Dried,
papery shell-skins of maggots. And, oh, the smell!
The stench was deafening, or whatever the word is
that means impairment to your olfactory sense.

Deafening and maddening yet I inhaled it
so that now the mouse is part of me.
Particulate pieces of its body
now inhabit mine.

We all want that place to curl into

be it a shoe, warm house, or someone’s
pair of lungs with its many winding passageways.