That porch was where we returned during summer’s twilight
to plaster another memory into our childhood chronicles
Where we sat next to each other
while ice cream drizzled down our lips
And we clashed philosophies like Socrates and Plato as
fireflies sputtered their light in the gloom
Where she delicately hemmed BFF into my skin
and we thought that our friendship couldn’t, wouldn’t rift.
But, when the school bells rang
our friendship became a scalpel in which we
twisted incisions in, together, for the last time
to retrace the alphabet. Forever isn’t to be.

© Matthew Harlovic