adolescent
I’ve walked with you in wet shoes while nature flexed its muscles and saw the sun and its glare over the tops of our used cars and when we sat together in them there was electricity and not the kind that people have domesticated the better kind that makes ghosts and that stamps moments into your brain that carries a rhythm like train tracks and raises and lowers the moon and the seasons and our bodies and I think about you every time I wash my sheets, and I remember you every time I see teenagers shouting for what looks like no reason at all and if I could go back and do it again I probably wouldn’t because I think it would be easier on you if it hadn’t happened and before you give me a medal let me add that there are also selfish reasons, reasons that I don’t want to get into because if you heard them you’d feel worse about everything and I would start to miss you again but I maybe would go back for one night, maybe one of the nights when we snuck out of our rooms and lived the adult life better than we’re living it now, one of the nights when we sped past the delinquent pizza places and hollow 24 hour gyms in search of a secluded parking lot, some place off the cops’ radar, off of the city’s radar, off our parents’ and our teachers’ radars, somewhere that wasn’t marked on a map that existed only in that invisible and fantastic span of time between 2 and 4 AM where we could finally wake up while everyone else slept where we could live our favorite movies, our legendary songs where we could cast off into the deep end and almost cut the line…
but the line was never cut and here we are back on shore with places to be and with reasons to measure time, with empty glasses and sinks with dirty dishes with leases and habits and mailboxes that are never empty and what if we tried it again, what if we rallied against reason and dropped our tools, our last names, our sanity and ran naked back into empty arms
