Fortune Cookie

They rushed out, shouting Surprise. I didn’t guess
our birthday was an event, though twenty-one
years before we both seemed like a Romulus
and Remus. The Gordian knot some she-wolf spun.

It was odd, the gift that is. Circling around
the table, all are shepherds of prowl and prey.
A blue tray held out to us on which we found
two cookies, fortunes in each. What do they say?

an aunt asks. Mine is unfurled. His cracks apart.
We are sly, reading the lines still veiled by shells.
Through the hush, we shrug at our dubious start
and switch fates, holding what the other foretells.

Even if I guessed what my fortune could be,
why suppose that what he holds is what holds me?