A Kiss by David Tomas Martinez

March 6, 2015   A Kiss   David Tomas Martinez

And sometimes it is loss                                                          that we lose,              and sometimes it is just lips. When I was                                a child, I would ask my mother to tuck me                                    in, wrap me tight in blankets,              make me into a burrito.                                Sometimes I would wait in bed, pressing my body stiff, like a board, mind like a feather, silly— setting the scene                            to be seen.                                                                   So I could be wrapped.                                                                                                    So I could be kissed. And what                                     I miss most, is being              made                                    again.            Copyright © 2015 by David Tomas Martinez. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This poem explores a Heraclitean idea of love, showing how, in the end, we often miss some of the most mundane things about the person lost, such as a kiss. This poem is an attempt to wiggle my toes in the stream of that kiss.” —David Tomas Martinez   David Tomas Martinez is the author of Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014) and the forthcoming Crosshatched(Sarabande Books, 2016). He is finishing his PhD in poetry at the University of Houston. Martinez lives in Brooklyn, New York. Most Recent Book by Martinez   Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014) "from Projection" by Lidija Dimkovska "Long Distance II" by Tony Harrison "Haunted" by Naomi Shihab Nye Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.