Monday. The first time we didn’t touch.
We talked about The Lighthouse. I was
the one who knew it was in black and white.
Brothers and the things that kept them busy,
yours: a bodybuilder, mine: with hands that roved lawnmowers
to gather electricity from their engines. We whittled
down the hours until my cocoa neared closing-time cold, and you drove me home
with David Bowie proclaiming moonlight dance on the car radio,
the revved goodbye of your red Subaru a perfect translation
of until-next-time.
Monday, bank holiday, meant you were off work,
and now we hold this weird reverence for Veterans Day
as the first opening of your time so we could eventually
fill in the lines around the rest of each other. Copenhagen blue and mulberry,
Prisma-colors I sometimes chalk in place of usual monochrome gradient for shadows.
You always say it happened Monday for you.
I claim it, too, but you wave it away,
and you’re right,
because really
it enveloped that Thursday
when we went to see The Lighthouse
at the wrong time and found ourselves ushered, instead,
into a showing of Midway, two lesbians willingly walking back
into an overcast theater of our hometowns, flannel-clad old men who might’ve gagged
if we’d even tried to touch (and this was when we could’ve—should’ve).
But you whispered to me during the explosives
and nothing was that serious, because Nick Jonas was there,
and you adored the fridge in that movie-set as much as I did
and I google it now but can’t find its color
because who pays attention to the kitchen scene in a war movie,
so why not say it was poppy, or ultramarine?
Months later we saw one like it in a store and blueprinted our own house
where your brother could stop by with any heavy weights
and no one would have to find back alleys for
overdue power bills,
and it was the little things.
And it wasn’t Monday, or a bank holiday,
and my hands were far too shy to reach
across upholstered arm-rest for anything but half-popped kernels,
but you still had
the time.