I keep a small pebble
in a shoe box labeled “last kiss”.
The box sits on a shelf in my closet
among scrapbooks and dust.
There is one less rock traveling
the sky. I saw it blister the riverbed,
a scarlet trail hissing behind it
before being extinguished
by the water’s numbing lips, which
through slow years of contact
polish the scarabs and birds of
hieroglyphics into unsaid words.
The last time we met
you blew a kiss into your hand
and threw it out of the car window
towards where I stood.
It went in my mouth and
rolled down my throat like moonshine.
A small seed of your ghost blistering
somewhere inside me, a scarlet trail
of incense hymns to Lazarus.
Here it is after years of coughing
in a shoe box labeled “last kiss”.
The whole universe is in there.
DQ 03/23/07
