We Kissed on the Lips

We kissed on the lips. In the morning, still half-asleep, we kissed him on the lips at the breakfast table, his face turned up from the Los Angeles Times. In the evening, hovering above the couch, we kissed her on the lips before going to bed. We kissed on the lips to say goodbye in the evening, on the lips to say goodbye when we left for college, on the lips to say so long when we left for good.

We kissed on the lips saying hello to the aunt and uncle come to our house for Easter Day. We kissed Nana on the lips, even after she rubbed a wet diaper on her cheeks to tone her skin. We kissed Elsie on her British-speaking lips. We would kiss a new brother on the lips if we got one. We kissed our new sister on the lips when she surprised us in the middle of our lives. We kissed Curly the dog on the lips and Fitzhugh the dog on the lips. They kissed back.

We stopped kissing those few awkward years. We shook hands through our teens. We hugged and we patted on the back. We put one arm across another shoulder and sometimes squeezed. When we became adults, we kissed sisters on the lips again. We kissed male and female cousins on the lips. We kissed friends on the lips. We kissed lovers on the lips to say we loved them. We kissed them on the lips to confess. We kissed to forgive. We kissed lovers on the lips in order to betray them.

After the stroke, we kissed our grandmother’s lips, even as a thread of saliva moved down her chin. We kissed our grandmother on the lips, even as she struggled to sit up in the rented hospital bed under her own roof, trying to swallow. We kissed our brother-in-law with AIDS on the lips. We kissed our grandfather’s lips, already sewn shut, that afternoon he lay in his coffin. We kissed our grandfather on the lips.

We kissed napkins and windows and, faraway in Paris, Oscar Wilde’s grave. Once, when you were talking, we kissed you on the lips. It didn’t slow you down at all. In fact, it made what you said more musical. There in the sidewalk café, you held the cup to its saucer. The traffic thickened along the boulevard, even as it grew silent. We kissed on the lips, and music played at the edges of your mouth and at the doors of bars and night clubs. Still, it became a thing, finally, as rare as Eskimos and their noses, as rare now as ice and time.