The Kiss

When he finally put

his mouth on me -- on

my shoulder -- the world

shifted a little on the tilted

axis of itself. The minutes

since my brother died

stopped marching ahead like

dumb soldiers and

the stars rested. 

His mouth on my shoulder and

then on my throat

and the world started up again

for me,

some machine deep inside it

recalibrating

all the little wheels

slowly reeling and speeding up,

the massive dawn lifting on the other

side of the turning world.

And when his mouth

pressed against my 

mouth, I

opened my mouth

and the world's chord

played at once:

a large, ordinary music rising

from a hand neither one of us could see.

Marie Howe, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Consolation, Jim Crews and Ted Kooser, eds. (Green Writers Press, 2019)