My mother’s father named her after chocolate, not a Hershey kiss
But something with more kick. Olena means shining light, a kiss

of dawn breaking over the mountain top. My broken
left arm healed three times over, she scattered kiss-

me-over-the-garden-gate in the backyard, the tendrils flared
up around my ribs like jellyfish stings, the kiss

of death. I never tried to die, but I have eaten the hours
with escargot, twelve shelled babies kissed

by swindlers, people whose promises always fall through. But
I can rely on the post office who send my sealed kisses

and secret missiles across the sea. My mother dances
in the kitchen with salsa, slipping over her clothes a Kiss

the Cook apron as she sings Frank Sinatra like it is still
1954 in the wheat fields, in other words, baby, kiss 

me. A double bassist plucked those notes from my rib cage
as we tried to forget there are still bombs, men kissing

up to more powerful men. Guilty, I called my mother at thirteen
to confess I had stolen stationary but not yet kisses.

She took me to church where I crossed the threshold
of my body, the gold-haloed face of an angel I kissed

for forgiveness. Since I was born, there has been hanging
over my head a painting: Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.

I treasure the memory for weeks, for years. We sleep
side by side one night through thunder, her arm against mine: a kiss

of skin. I pricked my skin because I thought I was diseased,
but I was only selfish. In the window, my breath fogs: God’s kiss.