Your eyes were a familiar town, A ghost town I call home
The first time we kissed, We tasted soil in each other's mouths, We both smelled fire And felt burning when our fingertips touched
We had dreams of a natural disaster β The rainfall of ash and pumice People screaming, temples collapsing And we woke up remembering What buried us
We lay in bed My bones on your bones, My skin against your skin My hands shook like an earthquake I asked you, "Did we not die like this?" You kissed me, unafraid, "Were we not born from this?"
A poem based on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD