Dear Old Stranger

[Dante]

This is a "deeply personal" piece of "poetry-prose fusion" I wrote.

Dear old stranger,
Do you remember the day when we painted the fort my step father built for us?
The pain blended together on the floor as we filled the walls and our bodies with color.
Drenched in pain, we posed with arms outstretched before my mother made us bathe.
Years later, she pained over our masterpiece before we sold the house.
Do you remember driving through the woods endlessly, only stopping when it got to dark?
We pretended we were taxi drivers and took each other to imaginary destinations.
Then one day, Little John drove the golf cart into the ditch and made us promise not to tell.
Do you remember our imaginations, our projects and ideas?
One day we were novelists. The next, we were a rap duo, writing songs about Iraq. We smeared slime over trees, made “mouthwash”, and even started our own club.
Do you remember acorns and Nintendo and sleepovers and parties?
I do.
Do you remember the day after Sunday School, when I came home to find you hiding in my closet?
I remember the days and months and years I spent in my own closet.
Do you remember the night we played out in the snow, pondering politics, and you said that maybe gay people were okay?
I hardly remember the night when I, a drunken coward, finally delivered the truth I had denied you of for so long, even as it looked us in the face.

Dear old stranger,
What happened?
What once felt so natural now seems so foreign.
You are a stranger, separated by a conjectural wall.
I know what you do, but I hear it through other sources who seem to mock me.
I see you in the halls with your friends and think back to the days when I could have sworn it would be me sitting next to you, your best friend.
You used to call for no reason other than to talk.
Now I only get calls when I am needed.
I feel left without one person on whom to depend; you are a stranger now.
We will grow old and talk once a year about superficial things and occasionally be reminded of
our past and do something silly (like writing this letter you’ll never receive).

Dear old stranger,
I’m so sorry.
I don’t know how to amend the mistakes we’ve made.
I don’t know how to make it the same again.
No longer are we two naïve children, we’re two naïve young men.
I feel like we’ve been dissembled and polarized to the degree that there is tension preventing us from even getting close to reforming again.
I am alone in a world that doesn’t fully understand me; no longer do we understand each other.
We don’t know how to act when we see each other with new friends—such old familiar strangers, half afraid of each other, half longing to get to know each other once again.

[BK]

i olod at "I remember the days and months and years I spent in my own closet."