Voices of Love

The Kiss

The door slid open; I lugged my bagsinto the room where a crusher smashed glassas one by one the woman fed it bottles.Back to me and hands at her sides, someonewas watching, as still as if that shattering racketpulled her back to childhood disasters, tumblerin pieces on the floor, milk pooled at her feet.

"Sorry," the woman shrugged. "So many."I said, "No hurry," glad to pause in my indifferentrounds of stores and lines and pumping gas,but when the other turned, older than both of us,her broad face smiling, I thought I must know herbecause the eyes were so sure of what they saw,her voice so warm in her "Hello, hello"when she leaned to kiss my cheek,hand fluttering on the back of my neck.I kissed her too, and the day was blessedeven if I could not raise her from shadowsof my mind. "Mother, Mother, that's enough."The smile dimmed as if we'd let her downagain. "Sorry, Alzheimer's," the daughter saidgroping deep in the soggy bag. Her motherturned her back, leaving me hollow.

I wanted to stand beside her, rest my armon her shoulders while we watched the emptiesof their daily lives recycle, wanted to leanmy head against hers and remember that kiss.Must we suffer some flaw before we can smile and kiss the stranger? Is love so hard it endureswithout memory? They left me with my bottles,and one by one I turned them into shards.

The Return of the Strangers

Years ago we thought it naturally so easyto spread and thrust and gibber outwhatever the mouth could form in ecstasy.Then came a muting of desire, a falling offof lust and easy joy. The old bed creakedto insomniac turns, the limbs lay flator tightly curled, and when the clockbuzzed off to say wake up, we cursed itfor redundancy. Was it kids, sleepingone room away who seemed to liebetween us like a naked sword forbiddingall foreplay, admitting only a furtive pokeand moan until dawn rasped across the roofand duties rattled up against our door?We could have kept our bodies cold,marmoreal nakedness making our livesinto medicinal specialties the waya gynecologist sees only names of partsand never the flower unfolding petaled lips.

But one summer night, after we'd packedthe last child into college, as if we'd heardsome satyr in a wood blowing his horn,the answering dryad's song, we sawin the sultry lightning's flash a breast,a rising prick, hips curved ready to letthe coiled years go. Whose voicewas that? we thought after the actwas played out like the storm, afterthe slap of bed slats and pounding rain grew still. All those years we'd talkedor yelled in dreams but hadn't usedthe notes that only abandoned lovecan sing. And so we lay therein the dark again, lost in the woodswe thought we knew by heart.

Anniversary

Does guilt always come to visit lovefrom time to time, bearing black roses,standing on the threshold and asking permissionto enter? I have been faithful to you sincethe first afternoon we lay together on your bed,even though another woman was my wife.Then why do I smell sometimes that perfumeof rot, hear the visitor shuffling his feet?I confess to many things time revealed,slow seepage of light like a prolonged dawn.

I see how love then lacked the urgency of age,how I mistook the quick flash of our nightsfor what was more truly there, pervasiveas if the scent of lilacs in a distant yardwas brought to us as we slept by breezesthrough an open window. I see how bodieswe thought would endure forever disguisedones that have shifted in shape, differentas parents are from their children.

I see that the things we did not say, forgotto...