Back to Issue Fifty-Eight

were wearing the same sweatshirt which I took
to be some kind of uniform or something
to pull on after practice and one of them
was asleep with his head
slipping ever slightly
towards the other one’s shoulder
but not quite ever landing there
and I could make up names to give them
to help me better tell this story
but that would be a way to claim
a closeness that isn’t mine
and I will not intrude, no,
I was at a distance,
sitting across the car,
my eyes only lighting on them
once or twice to give them privacy,
the one asleep and the one keeping watch
on the platforms as they passed by,
headphones, in, shoulders low,
and when it was his stop, the one awake,
he rose and roused his friend
so they could share what even I
could recognize was a secret handshake,
arms and hands perfectly mirrored
and choreographed with snaps and slaps
a rhythm all their own, and remember
moments ago? the boy had been asleep,
had been anywhere but here and yet
his limbs flew immediately with muscle memory,
such ease, like the standing boy’s body
had asked a question and his had answered yes
before he even knew what was being asked.
and when it was over,
the handshake, i mean,
having felt to me endless but
probably only a few seconds,
the leaving boy slipped out the sliding doors
while the staying one stayed,
slid right back into slumber,
head now bobbing with the throbbing train.
and I wasn’t transformed
into their mother exactly,
not their sister nor their sitter,
all of which, again, imply an intimacy
that isn’t accurate,
why do we only have so many names to give
the way we love each other?
there isn’t one to describe the ecstasy
it felt to glimpse the soft sweetness boys have
but don’t always keep,
the way they still had theirs,
had taught their bodies
how to share it without language,
how to know each other safe
beneath the pounding feet
of the city of men inventing
new ways to punish
each other and themselves