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 –
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