I’m not interested in the chemistry of kisses,
only the taste of you on a night broken
by the asphalt music of sirens and helicopters,
finished in a round of water meter hopscotch
in front of a stranger’s house with a fireplace
that makes your hair smell like a bonfire,
miles from any field worthy of such a burn.

Listen.

I have to tell you,
I no longer have much of a stomach
for gut-burning nights.

I’ll never miss the grip
loosened by the pitch and yaw
of cocktailwinds; the friends
are always true and the ride
is, more often than other, hell-of-a.

Still,

My taste is turning for salt
and tomorrow, for the water
that touches two highways named “One,”
for the sand where I’ll write our story
next to a basket boat waiting for the tide
to lift both into a sea that cares
nothing about our chemistry
or that of our kisses,
water that only wants to carry us

until

we no longer float or breath,

until

our story sinks beneath the bellies
of bottom beasts we never met,

until

the basket boat fisherman alone remembers us.