All we did for years was listen to the Sex Pistols
And drink Bombay gin while our parents were sleeping.
I spoke Russian, you spoke Ukrainian--
We were so close, as if we lived in the same family
but not the same body.
We liked to pretend alcohol ran in our veins
Instead of blood,
A clear soup, held in a great still
until the moment of birth.
We were restless.
But when we holed up between the redwoods
we didn’t have anywhere we wanted to go.
We thought a sloth two stories high might lumber past us –
“Friend,” we would say,
“we have seen your bones in a museum.”
“That’s all anyone could hope for,”
he would reply, through his mossy snout—
he never came.
But your belly was tight as a drum
packed in with cardamom
and your skin white as skimmed curd.
At your lips always a ready word.