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do you remember me? it's been four years. i look so different, but i think i might have seen a flicker of recognition in your eyes, maybe a smile. you look pretty different, too, with that half-baked teenage beard and that new school uniform. i remember how our old school uniform hung off your lily-white shoulders, not yet grown into. you've grown so much. I'm half-convinced i dreamed you, as you were years ago. i saw you and felt a tug in my gut, almost like stepping into a childhood home where someone else has set up a life. why am i am so stuck on seeing you, like it left a hook in my lungs, like a scratched-up CD? maybe because i knew you, but not anymore. maybe because we never really said goodbye. maybe because it was always, always complicated. maybe because we were friends. maybe because of the thumbnail car you left on my hand. maybe because i miss you. maybe because seeing you shot me right back to five summers ago when all that mattered was the melting heat of the oval grass and who we ate lunch with. i hope i see you again. maybe next time I'll say hi. maybe point out the scar and fit it to your thumbnail. maybe never tell you i picked at the scab over and over to have something to remember you by. maybe ask you about your favourite movie.
there we sit, waiting
for your dad to pick us up
bus stop pavement
spilling our guts

just like we did
when we used to talk
secrets glistening on the pavement
i don't know you anymore

opening like a mouth
the sun is bright and hot
like a tongue or a ribcage
that i used to know the shape of

spit blood at me and
ask me for advice
let me read the sequel
let me back into your life
sports kit - generic hair
i turn seven times in twenty minutes
to check if you're still there
we watch the play
you from outside
me from the back row
are you missing out on training?
you're alone and you must be cold
plastic shorts plastic shirt
standing in an alcove
where god isn't watching
hands pressed flush against cool glass
tall window
you look so small
hiding like a kid
wouldn't you rather be annihilating yourself on the court?
cold hands - dark window - unspecific sport
unspecific boy
has anyone else noticed you?
have you noticed me looking?
forgive me for assuming, but
i hope someday you allow yourself to come inside
there's a free seat next to me
back in toxic masculinity corner?
i don't even like you.
(i want to be just like you.)
i don't want to participate in your humiliation ritual
(i'm sick of being the sacrifice. spread someone else's ribs on the gym floor.)
**** conformity.
(i study every movement and take it for myself.)
**** conformity.
(i want to be just like you.)
**** conformity.
(can i wear your skin?)
don't come near me.
(i want proximity and brotherhood like a sick second hunger.)
please go away.
(please hit me without being afraid of hurting me. with all the tender force of brotherhood.)
i don't talk to him.
(look at me, look at me, look at me, please.)
i'm not good at sports.
(i work so hard and still come up short.)
don't hurt me.
(hurt me like a brother would. i am sick of you walking blood through the hall from the eggshells you walk on. i am not so fragile.)
i can smell the axe body spray.
(hit me like you know i can take it.)
please, no.
(i wish.)
sometimes i just wish i was cool
what else are you supposed to do in the suburbs?
find everything abandoned and go there at night?
thrift shop?
idle around the same mall and buy candles, journals, CDs (for your lack of cd player, except in your mom's car)?
see the same movie twice (the fire alarm goes off both times)?
throw wine bottles at pavement and watch the glass splinter?
run around empty ovals?
break into baseball fields?
go to the same public pool and open your eyes underwater?
burn lacy lingerie that you stole from the mall and watch as your femininity sticks, shrivelled, to the pavement?
go to school and get the bus home?
go to work and come home covered in pizza sauce?
hate it till you leave?
what else even is there?
i'm wasting my youth not throwing punches
i'm wasting away with every apology
i'm trying so hard to be scary
but I'm worried it'll make you scared of me
because teenagers are the meanest people on the planet
because i wanna be like richard silken
was richard silken a loser in highschool?
surely he was
no poet escapes ridicule and most of us deserve what we get
because i’m angry and no one except my parents beleive me
because man up man up man up
because i want to throw my guts up onto the pavement
because everything is so beautiful but none of it is real
because i wanna be like richard silken
and take this anger and make it meaningful
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