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[72] REPRIEVE If, as Rumi once wrote, The price of kissing is my life: at least this morning, let me not think about all that there is too much of—the weight of living accrued in collapsible boxes, all the kisses that have morphed into deeds and contracts, the kisses now overlaid with the smell of musty evenings in old countries, those that smack of the toil that comes of trying to sweeten others’ days— Surely there is room for some plain, no-strings-attached kissing, surely a way to modulate the hum of that one cicada in the trees so its voice lifts, doesn’t merely drown, in a chorus of other insistent voices? Surely there must be a way to lengthen the echoes of light sifting in the leaves and through damp lattices of neighbors’ fences; to dwell without rancor or remorse in moments when I might press my face against your nape to catch that drifting note— unnameable, unmistakable, stirring even my sorrows into fragrance. ...

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