H., the single most important event in my life, what transformed me forever and the terrapin ignored them as if they mean nothing, a waste of effort, such dismissal of what still actively transforms me permanently, they have no idea how or that the Kisses hold Love’s very blood—I am so proud of those Kisses, the way you leaned into them, and I could even see as well as feel the magnetic cables (for I was magnetized also), in your wrists that expertly pulled me toward you after 25 years; were they crazy? How dare they reject, “tough decision, too many poems, too bad” when this world needs the repair of first Kisses like those; that turtle that will never be kissed, I sure wasn’t in my 60 years of life until Kissing—you offered revival, a push toward immortality; indeed a world in which everything needs to be kissed like that, you were 66 and still had it!—for A Kiss is a meal

 

and more revealing than any breakfast, although you write in a poem I love, “You are breakfast” that essential meal without which, no day should begin; indeed no day of mine starts without some soul and heart fulfilling and nourishing thoughts and memories of you. Taste buds blossoming into that plant also hefty part of you with me there to coax it into operation, and then my mouth can scarcely close around the sweet bouquet of you that you promised—and delivered—you would bring.

 

"It really wasn’t my intention to enter a reverie on Kissing you, but

your bacon-y tongue rolls out a buffet, eggs and grits of your spit”

 

I was well fed that October day, a day that could have fed the world far better than two fish and five loaves of bread, courtesy an official savior, nothing like you, for fish will spoil and stink, as will the Malaclemys terrapins that inhabit neither freshwater nor ocean, not Atlantic by you, a basin full of the healing those Kisses will always contain, Yellow cab courier taking this medicine where most needed, SOS from O’Hare connected to all the world. Yes, an exchange of slobber, the best fixative ever, for inside it all the immortal seeds of Love, so needed in that doomsday vault, for the resurrection of our Love, the new and only truly universal healing element, the single most prized variety of the crop on which civilization was meant to be raised from the dead even, for there was no living Love in me until you Kissed me, and that most essential crop is entrusted to me in a yellow cab of fever pitch fantastic! and I have nurtured it into full blown Love; yes, I am forever infected, not some kid stuff, but the real adult deal,

 

—indeed, you said in yet another city, “You Like sex a lot!”, but I must qualify your observation for I only like sex a lot with you and your sort of thick streaming wheat ambition, nuts and fluid, salty fluid that paved my throat, I drank that thick and succulent milk while your tongue was deep inside me right behind the Brazilian wax welcome mat, hours like this, and I tell you this, H; I have been writing proofs of my Love for you daily, that math of my emotion, even mathematical proofs and proofs of my father’s bourbon, such proofs are also yours, we share proof of caring, proof of watching caring overlap with Loving the way we Love, and

 

that is all I want, to be believed when I tell you how much I love you. And I write these crazy recipes, a mixture of mathematics, poetry, and many other things swirling in my head; I was quite a handful but no one has a hand like yours

 

—indeed, H, ancient civilizations had a need to express love, ancient cave paintings made with salt under plant-based paint, dirt, charcoal mixed with spit, yes, you even said about me in a poetic masterpiece, “my clothing made of earth and spit” I am the whole cave snug around around you, your mustache an excellent paintbrush you use inside me, the hair moist from me, secretions from the walls, botanical masterpieces, Pong pinging, and instead those cheap kisses like the fakery in church, supposedly everyone loving and fellowshipping with each other, why on the Chicago day did we not encounter any others involved in Kisses like ours? Although I was too involved with you to notice others through those steamy real stained with passion glass vehicle windows.

 

I think too of those candy Kisses, very cheap, two for a penny; all the money that ever existed could never buy nor manufacture Kisses like those that turned a 60-year-old woman into a 16-year-old figuring out what to do when our Lips met forever. Those terrapins impermeable to salt, something essential for life, dead terrapins knowing nothing about Love, how a need for these Kisses grows and grows as the sick editorial world withers and chokes on its mistakes, I am sure none of them have been Kissed like that, your motivation, the taxi driver making mental notes until his mind blew up from the ecstasy brewing in his taxi, that emerges Love Coach, I who had been married 40 years feeling my first orgasms ever from Kissing you! I am still reeling from that moment I fell in Love with you, the Kisses themselves strong enough to be their own net as I fall into your arms forever.