Before

You remember this, don’t you?
We said, later, we’d remember,
and now it’s later. Do you?

You wrote your brother, then alive,
a long email (back when you wrote
and read for hours, we both did), and we slept

’til 11 (back when we slept so late),
and if I don’t write this down, it will
all fall away, but even I can’t remember

which city that was, which bus we’d taken,
what we’d drunk the night before.
We’d been trying to save money,

we didn’t eat, but we drank, and that
1 a.m. bartender gave us free rounds,
while we sang, not sure what,

knowing you, it was Italian, and we
drank, not sure what, because why,
it was free, our cups full, and then not,

and all we could do was walk back
how we’d come, stumbling toward
our anonymous room.