We were legends
Mythic anti-heroes and sunbathing statues
To be handed down through the fervent fires of forever
Untouchable by the languishing winds of time
Smiling at our own mortality with ****** knuckles and ****-eating grins

We were at once privy to all things and blank like hungry canvases, ready to absorb radiant smears.
They often laughed and asked how we made it this far allowing our uncorrupted appetites to persevere.
We winked back as we took another sip and listened to the music they couldn’t hear.

Such beautifully melancholic catharsis.

We openly dined on our borrowed time

We offered back no apology for our burning hearts.
We rode down the bridge on the backs of exploding horses looking to see what was over the next horizon
With inexhaustible decadence and the confidence of lightening we strolled down the sidewalks without avoiding the cracks,
In fact we hoped with thinly veiled secrecy that one would swallow us whole and reveal to us why the clouds are never satisfied enough to stay in one place

We danced our way through the unremarkable
Side-stepping the gasless motors and cynical flowers refusing to grow on the side of the road
With full glasses and brilliant bursts of light that couldn’t be held behind the cage of a bulb, we descended into the careless waves and let them stain our souls like fire onto coals

It was always the beginning of the day.
The night was always young.
Our souls were always wide awake.
The clocks simply couldn’t keep up.

And at the final beginning’s end, we refused to shake hands
Taking whatever breath we had left to fill our lungs with one last smoldering theft
We greeted death as an old friend whose invitation had been lost in the mail
And left this world the same way we came into it; on fire.

On fire.

We were you. We were them.  We were all the parts of this adventure that slipped through their hearts.
At least we left them our ashes so they find their own new starts.