for Jack Ceglic and Manuel Fernandez-Casteleiro

In a sense,
Jack and Manuel were starting over again.
Jack, a Romanian Jew who designed our house, 
drank our kids’ “concoctions” 
made out of everything on a restaurant’s table, 
which we wouldn’t do, 
and Manuel, who shared his amazement 
with a perplexing world
while surviving Cuba, communism, and aids, 
got married at City Hall not long after two men could.