“With lips and teeth to ask how my day went.” by Kathryn Ross
— Title taken from a line in ‘Horchata’, by Vampire Weekend
Sometimes I kiss my hands
under my covers late at night,
pretend I’m kissing you. But
they don’t kiss back, of course,
and they’re usually so cold
always, but especially at 3am
when I wake up and can’t
get back to sleep so I think
of you because I miss
you and everything
else too much and if
they can’t kiss I hope
they’ll offer words of comfort
but hands are not lips or mouths
and thank God they don’t have
teeth. But still I wish they’d
speak with your voice,
ask me how my day went
tell me you can’t sleep
because you miss me,
too.
Kathryn Ross
Twitter: @storytellerkath
Instagram: @speakthewritelanguage
Kathryn H. Ross adores cats, warm baths, and Daniel Radcliffe films. Her debut book, Black Was Not A Label (2019), was recently published with Orange County Indie Publisher PRONTO and she holds a BA and MA in English and Writing. Her work ranges from sentimental and absurd shorts and poetry to lamentation essays about living as a young black woman in America. Read her at speakthewritelanguage.com