Find someone like yourself. Find others.
Agree you will never desert each other.
— Adrienne Rich, ‘Yom Kippur 1984’
It is two o’clock in the morning.
I am reading poetry and drinking.
My man is drinking alongside me
and playing his records—glossy discs
heat-pressed and read by a needle,
an anachronism in our time. Thirty-
five years ago today my friend
was born, later to give life
to two who will become women
in their own right. I have made us
cocktails: aniseed and blackcurrant
with smoky bourbon; orange peel,
cognac and brown sugar. A voice
like cracked pepper—barley as fine
as seed pearls slipping through
my fingers. Earlier we watched larger-
than-life bees circle on screen
and the age-old wrestle between logic
and emotion, truth and fiction. He
was so tired he slept through most
of the movie—asking me afterwards
What was it about? I said: the sun;
a man and his regrets; a plant
and its roots; a train and a woman…
The music—my words on this page—
A man and his woman, this persistent beat,
these half-sounds I utter under my breath—