***
There was a long moment of falling
as in a dream,
or like the snow,
a moment when the world came
to a full stop,
when the universe shrank
to a grappa kiss
that your lips covered me with.
It took hours to reconnect with my body,
to establish where we were,
to continue to compose poems
by decomposing that grappa moment
with you.
There are days when I am driving around,
the sun is shining,
but in one millisecond I feel rotten
because you are further
than my arms can reach.
I go and sit in a cafe on Place Jourdan,
I order coffee with grappa,
thousands miles away from me
the earth keeps turning on,
something of you continues on
inside my lips:
I re-collect, re-sense your grappa kiss –
to remember is to feel
again,
to know it’s lost,
to feel your absence like a stone,
a pendulum heart swings back and forth –
I am standing on a mine.
Did I explode?
Am I gone?
Collage by Brussels-based artist Frederic Lipczynski
