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Every Kiss Resonates
Ward Kelley


Every kiss resonates on the texture of the soul;
you cannot exactly call it skin, but there is a form,
with boundaries and sensations, although mental
ones.

Every kiss resonates here, even though these lips
have been met a hundred thousand times before.
Like stamps on envelopes, the postage is the same,
but the message the kiss sends subtly changes
with each affixation.

Your kiss goodbye, this morning, entertained
our spirits like a penny tossed into a clear pond,
it flipped and waved, growing smaller,
veered into a strange arc, glided, inverted
once more, than vanished.

Still we knew it resides on top
a subterranean bronze mountain
on the floor of the soul that will
only be raised by death.

These textures are more akin
to water than skin.

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