The Couple Inside of You

It's March and light is heavy, doubling over itself.
I'm eyeballing the gold shards of your skin
and realizing there's a hundred little pieces that make up your body,
even a million. As far as I know,
whole galaxies could be coasting along your collarbone,
herds of microscopic sheep grazing on your thigh.
Who knows what planets I might be overturning when we touch,
what cosmos might be folding and unfolding
in the light years of your pupil.
Even my kiss might contain a glut of planetary gases,
enough to cause tornadoes in nine thousand of your city-states,
as a couple just like us sits outside in their own heavy light,
their version of palm trees shuffling above.
When the tornado hits
they could be saying the same things we're saying now,
lying on their bed the same way,
my kiss the thing they've feared only occasionally,
while watching TV movies or reading stories of destruction.
As I'm touching the gold of your arm,
I think of that couple drifting inside of you,
I think of them as I pull your mouth close
to meet mine.


By Kirsten Smith