It was two brothers balancing chemicals
between one moment’s oxygen and
another moment’s hydrocarbons-
on four hundred dollars’ rent
and all the new clothes we could buy;
it was dripping air conditioning
mixed with the solemn sound of redemption
running through the halls of our apartment building
like a stream waiting for rain
and it was the absence of a woman’s whisper
behind the bedroom door each night,
a ghostly lack of noise crawling along the walls
in a haze, resting without a word
in the silence of every room,
it was a lapse in consciousness,
in a gram and a ten dollar handle,
two skeletons searching for flesh,
and the marrow in their own bones.
