it’s wet concrete in the summer, a freshly laid foundation, exploring at sunset with you both, carving our names into the heart of the house so that the house would remember

forever

that we were real.

it’s tears in the basement of the dirtiest college dorm, a literal tornado raging outside, but the explosion of wind and torrents of rain were no match for the love emitted from a once flickering soul.

it’s a sunset that splashes color on a canvas of cloud as music drifts in waves, making pine trees tremble and friends inhale for presence and remembrance.

it’s laying on your bed, our bodies pressed together but not facing, on that squishy mattress topper that never stayed close to the wall, no matter how many times you hopped down and adjusted it while smiling at me.

it’s poetry written with no windows, a mutual reading and messages sent back and forth. There is nothing more powerful than sharing art, I often say, that reciprocal emptying and filling of the hearts that you and I have come to call vulnerability.

it’s holding you amidst the chaos closest to me, my hand wrapped around your skull, your head pressed to my chest, unknown truths flowing into one another as we danced in silence. I still don’t know how real this was.

it’s that little pendant you all made me, the multicolored beads with their significance and the string i broke immediately. but a love like that can’t be contained even when its pieces are lost.

it’s a thumb as it rubs a jagged rock, the child’s feet in trickling snow melt, his broken, tormented insides writhing against love.

it’s that old leather chair that we’d lie together on, the one I forgot about until now, an infant sleeping peacefully because he understood that only true love would make your arms and your chest feel like home.

it’s heavy breathing atop a fortified, artificial rock, where laughter soared and anthems roared while we watched the sun pop below a horizon we’d only just learned to appreciate.

it’s whoops down canyons and between the red rock, fresh footprints in undiscovered territory and the fear of being lost forever probing at and then screaming for us to be smarter. 

it’s lovers in a dirty, messy, communal and public world ignore the stains and hold one another, talking absent, thoughts absent, themselves, and all of themselves, present in courage.

it’s the dirt and summer carnage on a white t-shirt flying through the air, containing a little boy who loved nothing more than being free.

it’s a pact, signed in blood, by a naive group of friends who had yet to understand that they were both so right and so wrong about the world.

it’s that soliloquy i prepared for you, the gas station receipt, the quiet, unspoken spark that pushed me to ask you to the dance.

Sparks thrown into the atmosphere roll and whiz past two sets of eyes, joining twinkling stars to observe two friends broken, and broken together.

it’s the yellow wheat fields that i somehow appreciated through the pain, and the photo’s you’d take of me experiencing serenity for once in a lifetime.

it’s the pillars of water raging down a mountain side, pulling me closer to it and pulling us closer together, until we realized that we had always been one.

A kid, a social creature, whoops with glorious victory as he whips down slick, slanted snow, trees only blurs and his friends leaning and tightening their stomachs, as if they could catch up.

it’s running barefoot through fields of immense imagination, scars and warts and rashes forming on our impressionable legs, the grass ripping at our hearts.

it’s a father, who lets a son loose, not in ignorance of paternal responsibility but for it, because he knows that adventure is found where the bears, charred trunks and steaming Earth is. Risks are worth taking, he told me.

it’s an all nighter that forged a new connection, shared tears and pre-loved music shattering the walls that had been built around us by someone else.

it’s friends for life who let laughter rock their bodies and drain their eyes of tears, forgetting whey they were there in the first palace, as a pink sun sets it’s touch on the Bridgers and the river reminds us that life moves on. 

it’s soft smiles around a campfire, the sound of the raging river greeting our souls in the deepest way, as expectation, anticipation and memory swirled into one.

it’s a hug shared in a magic valley, a kind of intimacy that we’d always chased but always run away from, and for the first time we knew we were broken together.

it’s the soft green glow from the clock we needed to care about (for curfew’s sake) and your body wrapped around mine so that (oh, by the way, I’m sorry Maggie. I was and am gay. You were too)

A suffocated soul looks out in darkness at its creation story, nurturing, teaching, scarring, healing and all else placed in a single valley

it’s golf courses and sprinklers at dusk. 

it’s bellies pressed to family carpets inch forward to avoid hanging loops of Christmas lights above amid a myriad of atmospheric conditions: scents of peppermint hot chocolate in that Santa mug, and Christmas carols pluck silence from the deepest parts of the house and our chests. 

it’s homemade ziplines and fresh sharpies.

it’s whooping as we flew

crying as we knew

and loving while we grew.

something i’ve learned that i want to impart on you. 

It was surrender to a devil dressed in black that got me here

It is surrender to a devil dressed in grey that keeps me here

It will be surrender to love, dressed in nothing, that sets me free.