The Kiss
Timothy Kercher

The task at hand is to sleep, to digest the freeze-
dried contents of the emergency rations, calories
calculated just enough for survival. He sleeps in only
his clothes on the wooden table within the school—a
classroom passed over for sleeping bags. The windows
are open to let out the late-August heat, but the evening
air has stalled, the sun not yet gone down. Nonetheless,
he dreams of a breeze finding its way through the torching
of deciduous trees in Borjomi Gorge, the wind forming
a tunnel, one he looks into, hoping against all hope. He enters,
goes against the airstream, fights the draft & flame
back to his house at the forest’s edge—he stretches out,
leans his body forward, arms reaching, protecting his face,
using the force of air itself to support his head—
he sees in front of him not home,
but God’s lips. He knows it can’t last long.
The dream, or God, lets go.

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