Back Then

Out in the yard, my sister and I tore thread from century plants to braid into bracelets, ate chalky green bananas, threw coconuts onto the sidewalk to crack their hard, hairy skulls. The world had begun to happen, but not time. We would live forever, sunburnt and pricker-stuck, our promises written in blood. Not yet would men or illness distinguish us, our thoughts cleave us in two. If she squeezed sour calamondins into a potion, I drank it. When I jumped from the fig tree, she jumped.