Cleaning woman drops our portrait,
cracks glass
decades after shutter-snap.
Back then, wren-boned, I posed
beside your newly hunky torso
flexed beneath tuxedo,
your radiant blond wave
(from a bottle—a brother knows),
that sun-shot noon we squared shoulders and sang Cheese: basking
ushers at our sister's first no-guarantees
I do.
How could we guess what would crash?—
one of my few framed photos of you, still intact
despite this fracture
arcing between our bowties,
scarring your just-shaved cheek?
How can I blame diligent Ana's
Endust fingers
when I, too, could have held tighter,
even if unable to sustain
T-cells patrolling your bloodstream
on this breath-fogged side of the glass?