Kisses with Their Shoes On

Your mouth arrived like airport gates—announcements, hurried light—

A kiss that kept its laces tied, already late for the flight.

It tasted of the turnstile’s click, of schedules not yet met,

a promise pressed and penciled in, the kind that one might forget.

✧✧

We kissed beside the doormat’s plea—please linger, if you can—

But yours were kisses wearing shoes, already halfway gone.

They didn’t drop their carry-ons or hang up winter’s coat;

They kept the car key in the grin and traffic in the throat.

✧✧

Mine tried to be a kitchen chair, a bowl that holds the day,

a simmered, barefoot syllable that doesn’t run away.

But yours were road-map metaphors that never learned to stay—

a billboard moon, a freeway hum, a mile that tastes like gray.

✧✧

We met like trains that share a track for just a trembling span,

exchanging sparks and metal breath and all we almost can.

You kissed me like a headline does—bold, inked, and moving on;

I answered like a margin note that waits for dawn to yawn.

✧✧

I wanted rooms without alarms, a garden with its spade,

a door that knows its hinge by heart, a bed that doesn’t fade.

You wanted thunder in a shot, the lightning, not the lawn—

a wildfire in a matchstick night, then ash by morning’s yawn.

✧✧

So here’s my truth in suitcase form: I’ll pack your meteor,

I’ll keep the streak you left in me, the lift-off at my door.

But I’ll unlace my softer mouth, I’ll learn a slower tone—

and save my bare-souled, barefoot kiss for someone coming home.

‎✧✧

If ever you return without the sprinting in your lips,

Set down the map, unthread the key, and let urgency eclipse.

Then meet me where the carpets breathe and clocks forget to moan;

I’ll kiss you like a porch light does—unrushed, unshod, at home.