A little free verse on this Saturday afternoon. When was the last time I laid down anything close to poetry? I can’t remember either. But I did dream this last night.

My dream lover also had water falling from the eyes. It was one of those (many) times I wished I could go right back to sleep and of course, right back to that dream. To those millimeters between our faces.

And to the kissing. But I had to get up and buy tires.

And play tennis. And stop by a friend’s house to drop off a key.

And other assorted tasks and chores, all with the tiny flash fire of free fall tears and those kisses playing on a loop in the periphery of my mind. An alcove off to the right of the brain’s main stage. Smaller scene, smaller scale, just two people whispering and kissing in barely enough light to see, yet all morning long it pulls my full attention away from hitting topspin, and not getting overcharged because I’m a woman, and being polite about the fact that my friend doesn’t want me to linger after tendering the key.

I’m still kissing while I appear to be driving and watering flower pots and emptying the dishwasher. I’m still kissing as I get the mail. As I open a subscription box to find a free Atkins bar. As I get pissed and cancel the subscription. Still kissing. Still whispering. Writing more dialogue with reassurances and firmer pressure and urgency and hands. And the alchemical potency of sudden tears mixed with premeditated kisses.

An elixir.

Wondering how much chemistry I’d have to learn to make a story out of that. Unless I let it be magic instead of chemistry, which is more my style anyway, but chemistry is so sexy.

I’d write something about dying of not kissing. Declaring this a thing. A truer thing than the myth of getting sick from too much kissing. The immunity part is true, by the way. I didn’t make that up. But the part about getting sick if we don’t release some pent up kisses? I absolutely would make that up. Only instead of release I’d say activate or animate. Make it more energetic.

All those languishing maidens in all those fairy tales weren’t dying because they needed to BE kissed. They needed to do the kissing. Waiting to be kissed; that’s poppycock. That shit will land you flat and motionless on a stone platform encircled by purple flowers in a single beam of sunlight faster than a poisoned apple. Milady, go GET those kisses. At the first sign of decline. You should have been kissing regularly for maintenance and vitality, especially when one must go around warding off spells and curses and whatnot.

It looks like I’m folding laundry and warming up quesadillas. And I am doing those things. But I’m also disarming jealous witches with kisses. And enlivening the pallid mouths of lords and ladies too seldom kissed, all cavalier and insouciant like a knight. Or a rogue. Or something of folklore, not small, and not afraid, and not swayed by the fallacy of some conjured kissing sickness.