If my lips are zipped—if I keep our delicious and contagious secret—if I am amnesiac or too hungover to remember your mouth  on mine—if I forget the imprint of your body indelibly stamped—if I search for you, call for you, lover, stranger, alien—if I offer up  gratitude to the air—if I rob you of…

Often one of my daughters howls me to her bed,  and like a trained victim I tranceto their denned room to comfort a faceshaped by some dream or another—eyes pressed shut,lips in the nightlight the shade of a dried peach.Isn’t it absurd, an old prince like me, stirred by their delicate mouths? I nuzzle my head into…