CONTENT WARNING:
We had never seen naked men do what we did.
He’d come to my house, the sun bright on his small body.
In the kitchen, iyemi stirred the soup. From the cracked walls,
Lizards nodded away the world’s secrets.
I winked at him in sheer joy.
In the farm, we stripped naked, our bodies small gifts of innocence.
The birds, thousands of them mocked us with their hymns, &
The sky so clear if we peered hard, we’d see our reflections
in it. While he bore the hole, narrow as an escape, I knit
a wire onto the tip of a fresh branch. This was our second
trap in a month. All the animals were wise. To survive, we’re told,
Animals kill animals. For fun, we lay traps, pray the animals
into them. Thinking of it now, the memory mocks everything:
The sun glittering on my friend’s spinal cord
as he dug, my skin a wet tub, our little penises swinging
as we worked. I marvel at how the nudity of man can mean luck,
not shame, not sex; but luck, innocence, & meager desire.
We had never seen naked men do what we did but we did it.