Ancient Egyptian love poetry, found on papyri, excavated at Deir el-Medina. (1539-1075  B.C) 

Finally, I will drink life from your lips and wake up from this everlasting sleep.

​

I never touched the lips of the only person I’ve ever loved. She would soothe me to sleep, and  I would hold her as I slept. She would take my makeup off when I was too drunk, and I  would tie her shoelaces when they loosened. I thought of her as much as I breathed, and sure enough, I thought about what it would be like to kiss her. But we never did, not even once.

I think that goes to show that kissing is not plainly an act of love. So, what is it? Those with minds of science would call it an act of biology. Partner selection through the taste of our tongues. A neurochemical exchange. That oxytocin, that serotonin, that dopamine; can you feel it? Your brain is telling you to enjoy this, because our bodies are  compatible, because we can use that compatibility and go even further, let us keep our great  species going and kiss me! 

The spiritual-minded would call it an act of unity. Something beyond the physical plane, where energies merge and souls connect. Your being is in harmony with mine, even if just for this moment. I have been lost in search of a purpose, and it seems to have been found in you. Let us take advantage of it and kiss me! 

I think most would call it a simple act. Performed throughout centuries, by all kinds of  people, for all kinds of reasons. 

I love you, kiss me. I’m so sorry, kiss me. Kiss me goodbye. Kiss me in the morning.  I’m sad, kiss me? I’m so proud of you, kiss me! I kiss your neck because I am devoted to you. I kiss your cheek because I am grateful for you. I kiss your hand because I respect you.  

A kiss can mean so many things. Power, or the resignation of it. Friendship, or the transformation of it. Affection, or the dwindling of it. So on and so forth goes the list, and we  humans relish in this easy display of all that is too profound to say, through this act that is  entirely unique to us.  

Don’t be mistaken, there are other species that partake. The bonobo monkeys will kiss to socialise and strengthen the community, lovebirds will kiss to feed one another and nurture pair bonds, prairie dogs will kiss as a form of greeting and identifying their family. Elephants intertwine their trunks, parrots rub their beaks – the kiss is an act observed throughout nature,  across various species. Still, there is no other race for which the kiss means what it means to  

mankind: everything. This is what makes it unique to us – we kiss for reasons beyond a fundamental purpose. Sometimes, we kiss just because we can.  

​

There are times where something as simple as a kiss, can bear meaning too significant to grasp. In Māori culture, there is a traditional greeting called the hongi, or the “sharing of  breath.” It is an intimate act that is more platonic than anything else; where two people press their noses and foreheads to one another, and breathe in. It was dubbed the “Malay kiss” after Darwin’s travels in 1835 across the coastline of New Zealand. He is recorded to have found some amusement in an act so innate and raw, but can one truly understand the depth of something so sacred without understanding the language?

If he had been raised on that same coastline, he would have heard the myths: how the god Tāne Mahuta exhaled life into the very first woman, carved from the soil and awoken with his breath. He would have known that to share a hongi was to unite, not only with the  person, but the land. To be part of an ecosystem, a mechanism of which he would have just been a turning cog. That a mere kiss could be the symbol for life, the connection between the heavens and the core of the earth, and all the people in between.  

But he was not raised on that coastline, nor was I. We can dilute it down to the  “strangeness” of foreign customs or deride at the level of significance assigned to a simple greeting, but such are the efforts of those who would rather not know. Because sometimes a kiss means so much, we’d rather remain ignorant to it. Sometimes, we’d rather just laugh it off.  

​

I would be remiss not to consider how a kiss does not always symbolise unity. No matter whereupon the body you meet; nose to nose, face to face, lips to lips – there are moments where you could not be further apart.  

Take the kiss of Judas. Amidst those times, a kiss on the cheek between men was seen as a sign of high respect and honour. It was this kiss that Judas Iscariot – one of the twelve disciples and therefore one of those closest to the son of God, took Christ into an embrace and led him to his very execution with.  

Something that was once an act between friends. “Judas, are you betraying the Son of  Man with a kiss?” asked Jesus, for who could use their lips to defile something as binding as trust? But this is a question begged by many, for it is only those you trust that have the  capability of turning into traitors.  

Outside of religious context, a Judas kiss has been termed as an act of betrayal disguised by friendship. As most of us will come to learn, if we have not already, a kiss can also turn into a weapon. It can come in the form of a blade to the back, or a shot to the heart.  

I am not Christian, yet still I know how Jesus must have felt. I know that if bestowed upon by the wrong person, a kiss can just as easily send you to your death.  

​

I have not loved since, but I have kissed. I’ve kissed and had it mean as much as the dust in the air. I’ve kissed and had it mean more than I’d ever be able to admit. I’ve seen the embers that spark from a kiss, and the smoke as the flames suffocate.  

So heavy with emotion is a kiss. Even when we kiss without meaning, because indifference is just as strong a feeling as affection.  

The weight of all our feelings, the weight of all we fail to say, etched instead into the unspoken; I need to know you won’t leave, so I will kiss you in search of the taste of your heartbeat. I don’t want to see you again, so I will sharpen my tongue and kiss you with the edge of a thousand cuts.  

Is it an act of cowardice or bravery? Are we hiding behind the kiss or are we revealing ourselves with it? When I press my lips to yours, is it because it’s the only way I can tell you how I feel, or is it the only way I won’t have to tell you anything at all? These are questions that only we can ask, and only we can answer.  

Such is the enigma of mankind, where one thing can mean everything at once. We are scared, yet courageous. We have little to say, yet much to feel (or the other way around). We are defined by nothing but our changes. What is true one day may not be true the next. We are filled with mystery and have nothing but time to explore them. Thankfully, we have found a way to pass the time and share these mysteries with those who matter. We kiss.  

So, if the kiss is not an act of love, what is it? 

It is an act of humanity. It is an act of life. It is an act of death. It is something we do to both resist and sustain the cycle between the two. We kiss because we are alive. We kiss,  because one day we won’t be.  

A mournful fact, but at least a really great kiss can help us forget it. As written  thousands of years ago, by an unknown man who had nothing but time: