“Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.”

Remember then, the days that were? the golden light, spilling from ears and mouths and lips you couldn’t reach to touch but dammit the vodka could and the spins, the world spun out from under your feet as you caught your breath on dew spit grass and laughed and laughed until the moon rose and everyone became quiet-

quiet because they knew the secret, that secret, this one.

It’s never forever.

that slip of a minute which sits coyly in your hands as you feel time skim past you, as the words tumble free of you, that tiny moment, the breeze on your back, the light that grows in your eyes when you look past each other, when “fuck” sneaks out and with a gasp you remember a future you haven’t lived

you’re 17. Your shoes hang loose over the river water, black like greasy coal, your hair streams in the wind and your cigarette pretends it’s not yours as the smoke whirls into the night. It all has meaning. It all means something.

We’re gonna do something. We’re gonna be someone. Just wait. You’ll see.

Exhale. Inhale. Quiet holds.

It’s never truth. It’s all truth.

2 blocks become forever underfoot, as tomorrow accelerates towards you, legs growing to adulthood, heart shrinking in fear and anger, apathy closing. Decisions, thoughts, meaning.

You sit on her porch and wonder. You stare at the lights across the river and see yourself, lifetimes, with children, with no one, with cats, with treasure, in the heavens. All possible worlds, like fossils, stagnant against a step.

and again, you spin through a park, rictus like face as the drugs embrace, drill your veins with joy as a fire like sunrise covers your aching skin and you all swear that nothing, nothing, not one thing will ever be as beautiful as this moment, right now.

It’s a truth, finally.

You stumble home drunk on Earth and the coffee shop is still brown and your dreams are still smothered and you’re almost hungover but your heart screams….

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