Left Chicago in 2011.

Said goodbye to my
Old Friends.

Said hello
To friends
That had
Always been.

Took the summer
Or the summer
Took me.

I worked for a job.
The job worked
Me.

Made nachos
With gluten-free chips
For customers
In Beamers
That had no time
For dreamers.

That job worked me.

The sun was hot
That summer.
Hot like
A forgotten skillet
On the stove - smoking and in disarray.

And I saw a friend,
An old one
From way back when the
When was simply the present.

Their hair was different,
A salty grey.
Their smile
Reminded me
Of a lost piece of a puzzle
That the two of us never got around
To finishing.

We exchanged formalities.

What you doing?
Who you been doing it with?
Where you going?

Things of that nature.

In this exchange,
The crisps of their retinas
Seemed to curl inward
Like the burning
Edges of a slip of paper
Set aflame.

I wanted
To ask
If there was
Something wrong.

You know when
You can
Just feel it?

But I chose not to,
Too anxious to push
The
Dreary
Frankness of my
Hesitant question.

A tendency
I have and
Something
I have been advised
Not
To do.

We have our problems
As the clouds have their puff
And the sewers have their
Ooze,
Their *****,
Their tossed' memories.

So, I
Said goodbye
To that friend
Dressed in the robes of nostalgia
And fading time.

And
I worried about them
Like I never
Had before
As I got onto my bike
To go home.

For some reason,
Preserving
An entity of the holy past,
A power former godly,
And then meeting them in the present,
Wipes all that away.

How quick
Like a snap
Time can shift
Perception.

How quick

Time can and will and should
Change us
To face this day.