Sat on his bed comparing scars, then draped ourselves over the park sign to chain-smoke like we were eighteen and invincible and everything will last forever. We're older now, wiser, bitter, same difference. Talked the things that aren't anymore that should be, the transience of life, the meaninglessness and inherent meaning in that meaninglessness and the meaninglessness of that meaning. My best friend. Everyone else will always leave, even he will leave sometimes, but like slash and burn, we will tangle together, tangle apart, grow again from the refuse of our last explosion. Justice and Mercy, we are the same and different and merged and independent and strong and fucked up and no one will ever know us, three bottles of wine and two packs of cigarettes in, no one will ever know us like we do. We are temperamental and have seen the worst of eachother, but even through the terrible, awful things we have done, even when we do things like not talk for a year, we are still best friends.
He sidled up next to me on the lawn after my brother had gone to bed. This was after I goaded everyone into it (I have one tool in my toolbox and it's a hammer) which was after we went to the chain bar then the dive bar where I saw a kid I've not seen since I graduated high school. He wrapped his arm around me, me nestled in my camisole and henley and shitty oversized sweater and his big courdouroy jacket, and lit my cigarette, "For old time's sake"; "because [I] have played alone enough now." We had the talk we always needed to have. We are friends, were nothing more when we were younger because he really does ruin all those relationships, razed to the ground, no recovery, and it is not an option for either of us to lose this relationship for good, forever ever. We will find our way back in, cannot be apart for long. He apologized for leaving; we know it is more or less why I leap before I look in relationship. He told me I am attractive, he always thought so, and I told him I am, and I know, because that is where I am now.
I am too needy for him. I could never be happy in love with him, not really, and no consummation would ever be right. The love I have for him is more intense than any I've ever felt, but it has always been a chaste love. Difficult to explain, like everything else about us.
He clutched me to him, timid and pained and honest and now that I am older, I see all I ever wanted was that honesty.
The sun is rising in my heart, the way we used to watch, together, apart.