Storyteller
I can still feel the texture of your upstairs carpet
as we lay on our stomachs,
baring our eleven-year-old souls.
Sheepishly shedding our childhood skin,
trying on new faces & bodies.
We fell into one another at a dawn,
in which we made the world ours,
claiming our place in it—
before we knew we had our shoes
on the wrong feet.
I can still hear that song
you sang me in the parking lot,
by the gate we climb on our way home—
I can still hear those stories
you read me on the edge of your twin size bed,
I really didn’t know a single thing
about music or books
till you filled my world with them.
I owe you everything for that.
We sensed something
on those nights under the backyard moon.
Maybe it was the California morning air,
the sprinklers, the maps of our own design,
the mountains, the hidden creeks, the ancient trees.
We were both foolish and wise and full of words.
We sensed something
but despite all our words,
I don’t think we ever came close to catching it.
I think I failed you during those later
growing pain years,
a time we both began to be eaten alive
by something in that backwards town.
I beared down in the dogma we both battled.
Thinking I could hush my doubt & hide my truth behind fervor.
If only I’d been less jealous, less zealous
less scripted, more yours.
We were so young.
Not that that’s any excuse.
I was always a kool-aid drinker.
And you needed to control your narrative
because the chaos your truth had become.
We lost ourselves & each other in our storytelling instincts.
I’m so sorry for that.
Weighed down & weary wishing
for us as we once were.
In the years since, our identities have branched—
growing into fuller versions of ourselves,
still incomplete.
I don’t know how much of a role we will play
in one anothers' future chapters.
I cling to the hope of more of you ahead than behind—
But either way, I am forever grateful for you
my friend, my partner, my foil, my first love.
You are & always have been a sacred storyteller,
a secret keeper, a hobbit-hole-dweller.
You are my moon, a mind among minds,
a truth seeker, a world shaker,
my fierce, gentle friend.
I will never stop loving you
