Brother, do you remember
how the sheets were sticky with mist,
the smell of kelp so close we were floating
on a bed of it; how if we listened well
we could hear a captain swearing the dark
at his drunken men, and the voices of women
laughing low over the street? Laughing
until they had passed from hearing
and still we heard them in the inner ear,
as teasing as the whispers
in the hollow of the conch.

Soon you would be struggling in your sleep,
your legs tangling with mine as the bed creaked.
It was perfect the way our legs locked
and did not draw back beneath the sheets
as they would now, as we imagine them now, when we speak.
We were restless for the clear morning.
If the kitchen light spilled into our room,
the pine-knots on the ceiling might become
buoys, fishing boats, tattoos.
You were three years younger, perhaps
never shared these thoughts, but those voices
breathing in from the street, do you remember,
were low, and salty with language.