A Game of Keep Away
Under an overexposed powder blue high summer sky
I sit on a bench at a place I used to know.
Laughter,
faded at first then grows clearer,
reaches my ears.
I am startled at the flashback of so many years ago.
It was the last time I saw you,
you were light and full of life,
almost glowing with potential;
well on you’re way
to becoming
a writer
and an artist
and changing the world.
We were barely seventeen,
grown-up enough to drive and talk about things like colleges and futures
but naive enough to think we could cheat Death.
so we lived as if we had a million tomorrows.
I see you,
sprinting, smiling, red- faced and breathless,
you run playfully, chasing friends in a childish game of “keep away”
with a hat, a book or anything you can find.
Almost everything about your life should have been enough to break you.
But not when you were with us,
when you knew that someone understood,
someone cared;
and someone was there
it was enough to make you invincible,
for a time.
A smile small at first,
then grows larger, stretches across my face at the memory.
