porch on the frontier of a new england city

Sadie Carino​

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                                       i cuff myself first

                                  to shackle my neighbor. spring

                             becomes a lifetime.

 

the gold incisor tooth above his tongue glinted while he bit into the corn we three shared from a tiny grill. he relived aloud his childhood labor, picking coffee. salt water dripped past his crow's feet, I don't understand how something so painful to harvest can cost so little. together we gazed at our shared pot of bustello, mourned with him. mourned, then laughed over our summer sweet corn. he saw me notice how beautiful his spirit is, glowing, persistent. 

 

                      a dry lime knows its

                 tree craves its kin's soil, in our

            ravaged cosmic home.

 

with our few shared words we told lifetimes of stories. we three melted the ocean between us. we three met on the choppy salty center. he reached his lime-softened hand out so we could remove each other's shackles. i brought the ocean i knew and he brought the ocean he longed for. i summoned my ancestors and he called his from a place i didn’t know existed. he introduced his partner and their children. we all watched the same stars our ancestors gazed upwards for, from a dozen different mountains. 

 

          in humble esteem

     we made our city. it 

returned us to love. 

 

that evening we let us all be lovers of long and vital stories. history flowed across borders. we stepped around each other's sorrow, and into our prayers and fragments of miracles. we dreamed that night, impossible yesterday.

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