A voyage on the Day of Cosmas & Damian. The season offered sweetness.
We founded the Independent Youth of Inhaúma
over bitter swigs of cachaça and cooking chocolate. And the noise
of the berimbau pinched by our oldest had something like the tide
inside, but the sea was too far to die at sea
as men must do. And brand-new switchblades
for future beards and defending our honour. And none of us knew capoeira,
though the decade slipped and bobbed. Each of us
barefoot above the electrical grid
shoes laced together and flung towards the wires.
The boomerangs of the boys of 1999 in the Inhaúma sky,
now we’re seagull pilots in the dust.

Our parents came down hard. They’d never understand
one more pair of shoes, more rubber fruit
on the withered tree of suburbia.

The tide still high,
it was ours alone.

Image © Liana S