“I have come to love you in spite of—”
―Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng
straddling the windowsill watching morning glimmer
from the terminal spectral gray becoming blonde as coffee
cools here near where chirrups erupt whoosh of man
hosing down cleft sidewalks raising wraiths of spray against
loops of barbed wire that gem in early sun invisible spokes
of caffeine beginning to rotate into awareness porous enough
to feel nose-hairs filtering breath the closest to psalms I come
this early filled still with dawn tuning strings swooping pigeons
unfastening shutters one pulse in pure influence until the remote
resolves the screen into a voice that fills the room like cologne
…stigmatized for years as circus
spectacles, hear what it’s really like
to be connected to a sibling…
conjoined twins flash on screen two girls kissing
craniums one faces one way the other another
sheen of polished teeth their specialist doctor
grinning beneath a solid side shield mask to address us
…the result of a rare embryological
accident has made these two
sisters literally inseparable . . .
“serenity now” stops working contracts sharing brain
tissue they can’t be split must negotiate where to go
who speaks at what time how to dress when to use
the bathroom only agreeing being out in public
slightly torments them suddenly I love them more
for that “slightly” one a minute older suffers
from spina bifida still hopes to become a country singer
the other wants to be a nurse both hope to be mothers
they turn a practiced orbit each allowing the other equal
chance to address the camera looking directly through me
…I can’t imagine life without her
yet every day I try. I think God made us
this way because we are special..
then the keyboard synth loop pounds their faces to commercial
blind sunrise blithely persistent flickering through the window
I don’t even know their names try to recall hope to feel whole holy land
rather on synapses gray matter invisible ubiquitous signals of spectrum parabola-
shot antenna-caught every single second
the same amount of time 4.2 babies take to be born