The Couple Next Door

tend their yard every weekend, when they paint or straighten the purple fencepickets canting each other at the edge of their lot, hammering them down into soil to stand. How long will they stay put? My neighbors mend their gate, hinges rusted to blood-colored dust, then weave gold party-lights with orange lobster-nets & blue buoys along the planks. So much to see & not see again, each chore undone before they know it. I love how faithfully they work their garden all year, scumbling dried eelgrass in fall, raking away mulch in spring. Today the older one, Pat, plants weeds ripped from a cranberry-bog. Sassafras & pickerel, black locust & meadowsweet, wild sarsaparilla, checkerberry, starflower. Will they take root here? Meanwhile Chris waters seeds sown months ago. Furrows of kale, snap-bean, scallion break the surface, greedy for life. Muskrose & lilac cast their last shadows. Is it seeing or sun that makes them flicker, as if they’ve vanished? They shake like a letter in someone’s hand. Here come the guys from Whorfs (“Whores”) Court, walking their dog —also in drag—to the dunes. I miss seeing Disorient Express (a.k.a. Cheng, out of drag) walk by, in tulle & sequins the exact shade of bok choi. He must have endured things no one can name, to name only KS, pneumocystis, aplastic anemia. I remember he walked off his gurney when the ambulance came, then broke his nurse’s fingers in the hospital when he tried to change his IV line, wanting to live without meds. Zorivax, Ativan, leucovorin? I don't know. Pat & Chris pack down the loose dirt. I’ll never know what threads hold our lives together. They kiss, then fall on the grass. I should look away but don’t.