A Kiss

I first saw you in the old city cemetery.

You were mourning an Italian pilot

whose name you loved,

--Giovanni Valli!--

and whose crumbling headstone

you could not find

in the moss and dead leaves.

.

You found me instead.

With a cold razor to kiss me open

you stretched over me,

knuckles kneading my ribs.

Let me die for you, stranger, I said,

as that other stranger died

a century ago.

.

I sliced the line of

hidden skin under your left breast.

The only way to keep warm

was to press together

like flowers in a book,

my sap entering your tree.

.

We let them wrap us in gauze

around the shoulderblades that

erupted from your back, fairy wings,

white on pink and blue.

The cloth bound us tight,

your chin in my collarbone

the tip of my nose in your warm ear

and we prayed to be healed of all wounds,

to be safe from winter wind,

from distraction,

from our longing for death by dogfight.

Gentle thunder pulsed between our ribs

as mud and leaves wrapped into us too,

making us a starter pack of seeds.

.

We knew that at long last we had

permission to be still.

Spun tightly, our bodies softened.

Hot and cool threads of mycelium,

pink and lavender, tickled our

bones, our muscles, the inside of our eyes.

.

And after we climbed a papyrus stem

with our six legs,

netted glitter wings

pushed from our hard skin.

The wings of us,

now that we were a single dragonfly

waited patiently

for our new body to turn solid—

solid enough anyway, to sparkle,

electric, above the soft pond in summer.