Tongue Twister

When we were younger, yourself
            Aged six, myself nearing five,
Mother and Father took us,
            In the summertime, to a beach town, hot
In the belly of the Tropical ocean, thick
            As a buffalo, roiling around, its pores
In the cool, salty breeze –a town in India
            Named Poori.  
 
We’d walk to the waves, and playful, let
            The cool blue water curve around our feet, crashing
Into dense bouquets of foam and bubble, the lash of water itself
            Forming delicate anklets around our legs.

You would want to play the game, you’d say,

            Of tongue twisters. Repeat after me:
She sells sea shells on the sea shore, over
            And over again, till words would trip
Over saucy lips smothered with sunlight, the sounds
            Sticking to the walls of our mouths,
Our tongues embittered with confusion –we would laugh out loud,
            And giggle at the end; our summer afternoons
Thickening with songs, creamy to the tone,

Of gulls, herons, rookeries of white flighty albatross.

Closer to dusk, our bodies lathered in sweat, our feet caked
            With sand like fresh sawdust, we would walk
Into the lip of the blue-green ocean, and swim away, in the direction
            Of the vanishing horizon, our arms roaring beside our ears
In loops, falling, in soft whispers of splashes. The clouds,
            Oh! The beautiful clouds, would float across the sky
Like a necklace of swans, their slender necks bobbing and dipping
            In the colors of sunset, graceful and feminine, spun, as if,
In a lariat of freshwater pearls. Sister, I would clench my fists, then,
            In comfort of you, I would cry in my motions, feeling safe
With you, over a bottomless bed of breaking waves, and then swimming fast
            In your direction, I would hug you on a pause, so hard,
I would wring out a smile, and jostle around with a splendid calm,
            Feeling then,

not, at all, like your brother,

But your little twin sister.