I could have a mansion
That is higher than the trees
I could have all the gifts I want
And never ask please
I could fly to Paris
It’s at my beck and call
Why do I go through life
With nothing at all?

But when I dream
I dream of you
Maybe someday
You will come true

I can be the singer
Or the clown in every room
I can even call someone
To take me to the moon
I can put my makeup on
And drive the men insane
I can go to bed alone
And never know his name

But when I dream
I dream of you
Maybe someday
You will come true

Sandy Mason Theoret

***

At Gate C22 in the Portland Airport, a man in a broadband leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County.  They kissed and kissed and kissed.  Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward the short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like she’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island.  Like she’d been released from the ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.  

Neither of them were young.  His beard was grey.  She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose.  But they kissed lavish kisses, like the ocean in the early morning – the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. 

We were all watching.  Passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses.  We couldn’t look away.  We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face.  When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth.  As your mother must have looked at you no matter what happened after – if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now.  You once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middleaged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings – tilting our heads up.

Ellen Bass

***

It’s simple really.  We want the kiss … and the eyes full of love