There is glitter in places glitter should not be.
I'm not complaining. I'm reporting.
Four days of Recife in the street,
frevo umbrellas, the drums like a second heart
beating outside the first one, louder,
and now it's Ash Wednesday
and the priest is somewhere putting a cross on foreheads
and you are here, on your stomach,
with a red sequin stuck to your shoulder blade
like a small, shameless sun.
I don't remember the order of things.
I remember a staircase. I remember your hand
on the back of my neck in a crowd of ten thousand people
as if there were no one else on the street,
which there wasn't, by then.
I remember the mask coming off —
mine or yours, it doesn't matter —
and the feathers going everywhere
like a bird that had given up.
The floor tells the rest:
one sandal, one shirt, two glasses,
a trail of gold sequins from the door to the bed
that a detective could follow,
that a priest would not approve of.
Lie still. I'm going to find them all.
Every sequin. That's my penance.
One on the shoulder, one at the waist,
one in the dip of your back,
one — oh, look —
one there.
It's going to take a while.
Lent is forty days.
I'll be thorough.
