A Kiss for Life

Our first kiss. How will it be?  
Your lips brush my neck with shivers of desire,
Press the taste of passion against mine.  
One kiss: thirty seconds of wordless meaning
Speaking directly to hearts and trembling hands.  
Tender and urgent, caring and passionate,
A kiss that encompasses all.  
Yet if everything can be said in one breathless union of mouths,
What need of another? And I want more!
    
Perhaps it would be better to spread those seconds
Through the years. What is one burst of passion
Compared to a lifetime of companionship?  
The difference between a one-night-stand and true bliss.  
Can the heat of it warm me into old age,
Or would it cool to a dull memory?  
One kiss, no matter how sweet or deep,
Is not enough to keep love alive through a long life.
I might come to hate that kiss.  
If unrepeated, how can it be trusted?  
Beset by doubt, would I not prefer to have my years
Punctuated by kisses hot and swift?
    
More than signs of mere duty remembered,
No perfunctory mind-elsewhere dabs on forehead or nose,
They would bind us together.  
Skilfully placed or spaced, they could express intimacy
Compressed to such intensity that each one makes us whole.  
Straying between extremities they could set tremors
In fingertips to knees, starting earthquakes in our souls.  
But years from now, I might feel the press
Of lips against my cheek and miss
The thirty seconds’ bliss remembered.
    
In your eyes I find another question.  
Would repetition kill desire?
Could I ever tire of being kissed three times an hour,
Or would our love burn even higher?

Previously appeared in The Salopeot in summer 2012