Chapter Text
climbing up stony steps in an unfamiliar, hilly environment,
not a single clue where you’ve taken me.
i try not focus on your sun-bright, warm smile,
and instead on your calming eyes.
it’s difficult, i want to be at least a little perturbed.
but we both agreed to part on that age-old concrete. This was just as much you as it was me, and so this was all that we could be.
but then the look of hope when we arrive,
the look that floods your capsulated oceans
Now that just turns my attention and captivates my entire e v e r y t h i n g
i step aside to let you through the glass doors first,
and i almost wipe my heart along with my shoes at the door.
but just as i stay behind, head down, needing to
collect and calibrate,
your long, slender fingers are wrapping around my wrist,
you’ve stopped right in front of me, and the suddenness has made me b u m p ! right into you,
i’m opening my mouth for an apology, for a question, for a—
‘can i show you something really cool?’
your eyes keep lighting up, and man, you can’t keep this up
‘yeah, dude,’ i breathe
because what else can i say to the face i called home at one point or another
and it occurs to me then, so suddenly, that it’s very strange
you look like home, i think.
i mean, how could you not? no period of time
could break that camaraderie
it’s definitely a given
but this time around, as you pull me down a secret path of stairs,
my mind flashes to the steps of the basement mom now uses as a craftroom
the steps i pulled you down some days, you pulled others,
and at the bottom,
all the times i nearly pressed my red ice lips against chapped ones
(maybe this’ll be nice)
at the bottom, we didn’t find my mother painting on a 16x20 canvas
and there were no more amateur, adolescent kisses to share
yet something achingly familiar still filled the air
- there lies a place, where beneath a coffee shop,
- bright neon lights, flashing pixelated figures, translucent marquees, and dirty coins wearing engraved faces which look eerily like daniel radcliffe liter the floor
- you purchase some more filthy daniels at the greasy, speckled counter
- i’m left staring at a rumbling, fumbling machine i haven’t faced since senior year
well, would you imagine that.
you & i,
craving the high,
willingly let nostalgia
sweep us away
we play ! and play ! and play !
and shit, you really have worked out.
look at how you’re flexing
while you tightly grip joysticks
and somehow kick my ass
(you always were better at traditional, huh?)
it’s not a ripped kind of fit either,
it’s that “i’ll make an effort to stay in shape” fit
and i’ve never seen you want to make that effort before
you’re glowing,
not just in the LCD lights glaring through glass
but just as a person,
you’ve grown and you’re glowing
“ K . O “ flashes the screen, and it’s a brutal reflection of my insides
in the best way possible. you’ve grown and it’s beautiful.
and yet...
not a lot has changed:
you still snort
you still sweat a bit more than i do
you still hate bad puns
you still love to ride the high with me when we reign victorious and dance ,
the wide audience of that glowing screen and the blitzed-out-his-gourd cashier bearing witness
and maybe, if i listen just close enough,
close enough to the clacking plastic button smashes
close enough to the subtle but lingering finger brushes
far enough from the heart, the fiend, that is just waiting to smash through my chest and land beside a joystick atop buttons, like the traitor it is
i’d find that somewhere between all these euphonious signals, is an ‘i missed you.’
and man, if it’s there, if its truly there,
i really missed you, too.