Rodin

We’re kissing, but only because I initiated it. And is—is he cringing?

Beneath the hardening wax stamp of our lips, he confesses, “I don’t like kissing. It’s the only reason I hadn’t … sooner.”

We’re frozen in eternal slow motion, and he also tells me he prefers double time. “Double speed?” I ask, without yielding any flesh. “Isn’t that unintelligible?”

He reassures me that listening presto to others dissecting the lives of others dissecting the lives of others is an insurance policy against dementia in forty years. “Anything to forge new pathways in the neural network.”

I focus on the kiss at hand, but wonder at what point did we slip from the two of us, exchanging cells, to others dissecting the lives of others dissecting the lives of others. I think I feel him pulling away.

“It’s Saturday,” I say, catching him with my elbow. “Let’s try triple speed and keep a spreadsheet of the new pathways as they’re forged.” He sighs with reverence and willingly becomes stone in my embouchure’s embrace, while the rest of the world hurtles centuries onward.

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