In the heart of this southern city where lady’s wear Sunday hats,
eat grits and drink beer in mugs and where gents were once proper,
I meet her for a drink, the first time in forty years, young adults then,
where we lived up the street from the White Castle restaurant where servers wore white
starched hats, served square hamburgers to us on spinning vinyl stools.

You’re an artist and youngest and spoiled sister of the boyfriend who first touched me and
now my memory struggles to learn how you called me the legend who snatched your brother
when we were teenagers, and absconded to Europe, at a time when kids nestled under
protective families umbrellas. I was the big sister you always wanted, but now jealous of
your brother’s first love.

I don’t know what happened to him and I, but I shall never forget the intensity of my young
desire drowned in his brilliance and aptitude for math and how he understood the connection
between math and music and each time he strummed me a song on that psychedelic guitar
he added, multiplied and divided the chances of us meeting again,
one day, gray and wrinkled, sometime after meeting the sister he never loved, but, I always
wanted.