My new favourite poem.

THE ARCHIPELAGO of KISSES

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.

. The Archipelago of Kisses, by Jeffrey McDaniel