My old home and a blue sky,
The evening sunlight in my eyes,
Remembering ’08 in winter fields
And back to summer on the lake
Describing my home to him thousands
Of miles away,
And how I forgot to tell him about
The Christmas lights
And the comfort of the cold air,
The children laughing on their way home
And the way it feels in October when I’m
Walking through soggy streets.
And how many worlds stand between us?
And my slice of his childhood 10 years
Ago still echoes,
And I wonder if I could ever really swap this life for
That; snow every December and ice skating
In the old school playground.
Would those memories ever replace what I
See now in front of me, would the seasons
Shift from orange trees to knee deep
In snow and rooms full of tinned food
Just in case?
Of this, I’m unsure because somehow,
Somewhere, I will always be this.
Always that bench and that first kiss,
Always that bridge where for one year things
Made sense,
Always that summer and those faces,
Always me and the other half of me
Discovered at 14 and never lost despite
What happened on New Year’s Eve three years ago.
Always the boy down the street who
Forgave what I did to him on Christmas Night
2009,
And the way he still comes around for coffee,
Asks about my Mother and says he likes
My new haircut.
And despite what he has to lose by being here
He stays still,
And does not falter in the name of new
Dedications or worrisome green eyed
Girls,
A loyalty I know won’t alter even
If the girl next door returns his
Affections and his voice echoes through
The thin walls of our shared home.
A silence and a city that
Glows with days passed;
My home for now,
My home forever
Even if my lungs take their
Final breath on a foreign land.