I am kissing you! you said,
and they were the first words I ever heard.
I am kissing you! you told me,
and all the words in the world ever said before
would no longer be:

words on a million yellowed pages suddenly dissolved,
and words in busy mouths went down the wrong way;
words chiselled in stone weathered in a day,
and words on billboards mysteriously faded.

There were words on walls that peeled away like blistered skins,
and inked words on wanderers' arms
came off on their rolled-up sleeves;
words fell in flurries,
made word-drifts outside doors of speakeasies;
words covered wood-piles
and clung to the black and ghoulish hands
of cemetery pines.

Oh! discarded words and mouths mysteriously quiet!
empty pages, smooth gravestones, un-signposted streets!
blank newspapers, strange and empty libraries,
piloting sky-writers lost for direction;
lovers on sand with sticks in hand
leaving the wet beach blank.
Oh! when you said the thing you did, my dearest-
you were forlorn Adam, and I was newborn Eve,
and, until that time,
no language had been born,
no fishes had been known,
the maps of seas were nameless,
criminals went blameless, until
the day you whispered those terrifying words to me.