In Ancient Rome, the old women used to believe that after a night
of good love, it was possible for a couple to spontaneously combust,
leaving nothing but a pile of slightly smoking ashes behind, smelling
faintly of sweat mingled with olive oil for the relatives of the dead lovers
to sweep up and bury forty feet beneath the earth.
I’ve seen landslides pause in their paths, wishing to run themselves
to death down your skin instead of the old familiar muddy roads,
the ones that lead away from home but then return, again and again,
to the front door where it all began. Tonight I kiss the backs
of your knees, trying in a way to be a landslide too,
the kind that crushes everything before it but never
gives it up for dead. Last year on vacation in Italy
at the museum you climbed into a glass case of dinosaur bones
when the tour guides weren’t looking, and I matched you,
fracture for fracture, dimple for dimple, jaw to jaw,
the smooth white skin of your arm gleaming
like so many sharp teeth, eventually coming to the conclusion
that if spontaneous combustion were possible
in this day and age, I’d have burned up a thousand times by now
every time you bite your lip.