September 30th

I spend the other 364 days of the year pretending this one does not exist

But I think I might be the reason I'm breaking, and I'm sorry if my voice starts shaking because this

Is the poem I wasn't ready to write

The first time I met you

I marched up to you

Sun dress blazing

and told you to take a picture, it would last longer,

It was also the first time I heard you laugh

The second time I met you

All I could offer was the wet paper towels I shoved in my pockets after watching you get jumped down by the river

Our class of feral freshman enjoying the first bloodshed of high school

Wolf-packed like a circle howling "faggot"

And as I tried to clean you up on the park bench

you handed me a flip phone

and said take a picture, it'll last longer,

I shook my head.

You winked and said,

"I'm not gay by the way."

I think that was the moment you became my best friend,

My run from the cops friend,

My Thanksgiving leftovers friend,

My show me around this town friend,

My need a place to hide friend,

My call in the middle of the night friend.

My "here take my jacket," friend,

My "no matter what you've done I'm all in" friend.

From the outside looking in people saw

The pot head and the popular kid

The drop out and the valedictorian

The outcast and the debate team captain

The coal mine and the canary

But together we made up the "so"s in

"So far, so good"

You saw the real warm light in me

Not the cold bright I'd adorned casually

You saw every cobweb corner and illuminated them all with the understanding I didn't know I craved.

When I told you "I love you"

I didn't care if you said it back

Because there were no conditions on that

And because you had already said it 930 times before

When anxiety had me passed out in the hallway, you came looking.

When waking nightmares had me shaking on the bus, you held my hand

When I couldn't hide the fear of what might happen when I got home, you gave me a knife and typed your number in the place of 911

The third time I met you

It had been a few years

You told me my long hair looked beautiful

And we laughed about the time I ran four miles to the train tracks to hug you one more time,

and how you held me so tightly it popped my back.

That I slipped that letter in your backpack, and how often you read it.

How you missed me

and you missed home.

And I joked that maybe we should take a picture.

When you ran away, I came looking

When you told me the measurements of the depths of loneliness, I held your hand

And when you died,

I called your number 422 times, and screamed at your voice-mail

that you better pick up or I'd kill you.

We should have taken a picture,

Something to last a little longer