# Kisses Kisses are small flowers blooming on the lips— they wilt by evening. A kiss is a door that opens onto another room, another world where breathing changes. Some kisses taste of goodbye, salt and something like regret. Some taste of morning, of coffee and promises we'll forget by noon. There are kisses that leave marks— bruises we wear like badges, proof that we were once held so tightly the world fell away. And there are the other kind: brief as a sparrow's landing, gone before you can close your eyes, leaving only the ghost of warmth on your skin. A kiss is the only argument where both sides win. It is surrender and conquest in the same breath. It is the smallest revolution— two mouths refusing to stay separate, two people saying what words have never quite managed: *I am here. You are here. This matters.* Then it ends. The lips part. The spell breaks. But something lingers— a softness, a sweetness, a reason to believe that closeness is possible, that we are not entirely alone in this reckless, aching world.