Aristotle's Kiss

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

There are places

my heart goes to,

cracks in the earth

softened by sunrise

or sunset.

 

Remember those pink cookies

we’d get on the way to work

to share over coffee?

 

I haven’t had one in years,

but here they are,

hanging like a sun

from a tree.

 

Perfectly round, like fruit,

to pick, to share,

to illuminate the darkness

we’ve been held in for too long.

 

Aristotle’s kiss

has been long and deep.

All that salt

needs something sweet.

 

Meet me here before

the blue-black of night,

before crow-dark feathers

creep cold across our eyelids.

 

It’s nearing sunset.

I’ve one plate,

two halves,

and

coffee’s waiting.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

Poetic Bloomings

 

Reference: “Men cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together.”  -Aristotle

 

Rose Water

 

Trembling at the beach

on a day meant for indoors,

 

tossing her ashes

like a paper airplane

 

in the wind,

 

we knew it was

always going to be this way—

 

she was always

going to come back to us,

 

one way or another—

 

her ghost on the cereal box, first thing,

her costumes hanging in the attic,

 

somehow noisily animated

after dark.

 

Each of our eyes

a Lucky Strike,

 

red-rimmed and wondering

how to pilot

 

the rest of it

without her.

 

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For the List at Shay’s Word Garden