“O”

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Audio: Read by the author.

I was pushing seventy and so was he
when his tall body stepped into the kitchen

air shimmering with garlicky gumbo.
And I stepped inside his lineated arms

and tilted my face up. How encircled I was.
The whole sparkling metropolis

around us revolved. Everything
rose up for the first time.

His tongue plush on the roof of my mouth,
our names undone. He looked

through round spectacles and eyes spiked gold
staring far back into me like Dr. Chekhov

from eternity’s dust jacket.
I was fifteen maybe, or a hundred.

We wondered at each other. I joked
did I need a note from his wife to kiss

back. He said no, which was the first lie.
The doorbell rang, guests whose raincoats

I shook off. That was it, the start of it, ending.
On my deathbed, I’ll exhale his name:

O, here is my mouth.