I'm fifteen and smoking a cigarette on the edge of pritchard park. Keep in mind, this was the first date I'd ever been on. We were both too young, so like any fifteen year old we brought our best friends along. I brought mine and he brought you. You gave me a wicked smile and told me 'he really likes you, you know.' this was the first time I met you, so I laugh it off and reply that you're just trying to get your best friend laid. Two years later you give me the same wicked grin and admit you were indeed just trying to get your best friend laid. You predicted how the next seven years of our relationship would go. You were right. I'm sixteen and we think that Olympus is laid at our feet, despite the number of times we opened our skin to discover we don't bleed ichor. You laugh and say that you were no god, just an mortal like Icarus caught between flying and falling, caught between the roaring waves of depression and the scorching brightness of the manic fits. You say that you're going to burn burn burn, until you can fly no more. You say you're going to let the ocean swallow you up and pull you under. You say that no amount of wax or feathers can withstand his storm. I'm seventeen and the party has died down. You tell me you kiss pretty girls then break their hearts because you want to feel immortalized, you tell me your heart is unexplored territory that no woman has yet to withstand. There's something feral in your grin, you take a drag from your joint and exhale a smoke ring. "There's no tellin' how much time they have left to try and domesticate me." I'm eighteen and I have one unopened message from you. '12:34 am: it's getting really bad again. I think I've let the devil in.' so I call you and we talk about conspiracy theories and we talk about the universe and we talk about my first heartbreak. 'He'll come around.' you tell me, and he did. I'm nineteen and it's been six weeks since we'd spoken. On September the eighth you tell me what you think happens after death. You tell me it's not the end nor is birth the beginning. I asked you how stoned you were and you tell me that you felt like the branches of a tree welcoming a car going 90 mph. We speak for four more hours than don't speak for another ten weeks. I'm 20 and I'm telling you about my second underage drinking ticket, and you laugh because 'fuck you must have the worst luck in the world.' You tell me you did molly for four days in a row and I didn't think to worry. You tell me you'd found the light and you found the balance. I thought you were getting better, why weren't you getting better? I'm 21 and we hadn't spoken in a year. I run into you outside tobacco plus and you tell me that you'd found a girl who managed to keep up with all of your ferocity. You told me she was the queen of the wolves, because you'd always called yourself the kind. I wa
