Kara Olson

What Kissing is For

In the beginning, there was kissing behind a closed door. At kitchen sinks, women whispered to one another

you’re beautiful. When no one was looking, fingers ran along the backs of necks.

There was kissing for not holding hands in front of the others, kissing for what two bodies could make

as one shadow, kissing for the long fire of causation and cure that raged in the hallway. And because none

ran toward the fire, there was all manner of whisper. Your kind of women were a kind

of whisper. Those who died behind the door and went to heaven were a kind of whisper.

Any woman behind the door kissed both the living and the dead.

Women of the past, discredited or dead, shared secrets. The living travelled

to places their bodies had never been. Knees touched beneath tables.

Eyes followed, gestured where to go. Women folded like flowers behind the door,

nourished on dreams. There was kissing for standing, a stranger

in your own mouth, kissing because the first and second telling were never alike,

kissing for not listening when the others said they couldn’t imagine it.

Any woman behind the door only had to touch another woman to find

what lay inside herself. Behind the door, women found the root of other women.

They exchanged the natural use– what their bodies were made for. When no one was looking,

your kind of women wiped star-matter from their hands.