my lover has said that she needs magic

my lover has said that she needs magic

from the supernaturally quiet

calm that comes with a type of kiss,

something like a whispered song.

and from my imperfect consideration,

after diving deeply into its

meaning, i have met with some terms,

thinking:

her meaning is like the texture of the perfect

day in which all the 

benevolence of Mother is received -

this kiss, if enjoined in

simple sweetness, sees two

different things happen at once:

cleaving fear and spiritual elation.

love arises from this and wears a thin veneer;

nearly impossible to breach

without her necessary components,

which have different names 

to different people: kindness, empathy,

release, joy, faith, blindness.

i don't know, exactly.

the point is, my lover cannot 

extract love from something

that does not first explode.

and therefore, in this manner,

she cannot abide a kiss that is absent 

a sacred, mystical communion.

she told me once, after

meeting a suitor for the first

time, that their kiss left her subtracted

from the moment, and

therefore darkly abandoned in that

moment, roughly accumulated.

i just didn't feel it

she explained, and to my

inquisitive brow, she said,

it's hard to explain,

but there was nothing

here,

and she placed a palm on her belly 

with the same look as having been 

assaulted by a boring, generic thought;

almost verging on a type of tear,
the way she looks sometimes
when life has gone slate.

it was - and it is not -
a testimony to the
manner in which he kissed;

she had no degrading revulsion,
no unnecessary private scold
of the man himself,

who was, by her own
admission, wonderfully
polite, attractive, even funny.

when she first meets a lover,
she expects no mistrial of the
event beforehand, harbors no prejudice.

but rather - and i am being painfully,
boorishly, nonspecific here
because i had to puzzle through it

to find her Truth, that i might join
her in the center of the idea
and understand it -

but i believe
she hopes for
something fragmenting,

something that cracks open
her sternum and stirs
the remote calm into a frenzy.

magic, she called it,
and i had to excuse the
limp term in my mind

because it rang like
a muted bell or a
water-submerged idea.

i felt it with you that
first kiss, she confessed,
and i was then floated

instantly, pulled backward
to that moment, the
muscles of my memory coiling,

to a location
caved-in by a million other
encroaching, dusty stones.

i didn't recall magic -
but rather felt the
light-headedness

that comes on the wing
of fueled fear, the same feeling
of falling in a dream,

face down, toward earth
from a fantastic height,
my breath exhumed,

and startle-waking
just as my face
strikes cold consciousness.

from the separation of our
lips, from the second the
skin of them slipped silently apart,

i was upended, my heart
a thundering vessel,
my mind compelled toward

some vanishing light,
some ascending thought,
some untouchable moon.

thereafter i craved nothing
less than to be a new alien
to myself,

to depart from what was
and had been and confront
a better form of me.

my hands tingled,
i do remember that:
they nearly hurt

with a desire to
forever hold in their tips
the ornament of her soul.

oh! oh yes
i agreed with her
then, newly birthed.

magic, i said.

she blushed:

yes...

yes!