1968

you will be together for fifty years
starting in the sixties when
eight years old
we met in a line to buy flour
because the war was coming
heat was spilling from the walls
onto our bare feet
as we stood and feared to look
-
you were a bundle of manners
with a future in dissidence
I could see how your hair would grow
and what car were you going to drive
you travelled all Europe
wrote over walls
that were then turned into cult places
and I have seen it all
-
we have lived the war
as nations died out
and as both of us ceased
until this morning
when she told me
we would be together for fifty years
and I knew we could not
we have gone out of relevance after all
-
you can wait for me in the summer heat
you can wait until I’m late
and maybe then you will remember
we have met
neither of us already alive
but still dead we survived our whole lives
and now
there is nothing left to live
-
you remind me of the time
when there were answers to fight for
and places to sit at night
when it could be just silent
but we are not them anymore
you could now spill me if you tried
and let the last Russian dog in town
drink me as the brothers march down