Gold, by Linda Kohler

The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt (Austria) 1907-1908

Gold​

Call us debris, the whorls of a kiss. There’s no verbatim for this lit, shared space. Maybe we were each a TESS in orbit, trailing the universe for inhabitable bodies beyond our own. A brave science, mining for glimmers in the dark. How many hours have we sat and mapped it out, nattering on sweet trajectories under night confetti? With golden nothings scribbling by the fence – chestnut-brown anemones erupted on the bed. Vines in the crimson dusk kinked on our naked feet. Do you see the flowers sprouting from our crowns? Before you, wise ones bade me only kiss where butterflies throb. This! Generations of ranunculi made the pattern in our kiss. So lush, almost obscene. Do the neighbours glimpse our quilted pornography? What about these stars, once silvery, set high? Now they’re honey-smattered low around our gamut-of-yellow sheen.  

Linda Kohler

Linda Kohler lives and writes in Kaurna Country, South Australia, with her three people and a lorikeet. You can find her at lindakohler.com.