𝚂𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚗

I see you -

You sit cross-legged in the old backyard,

hair wild, hands stained with dirt and dreams.

wearing a skin I no longer guard.

You are all hunger and hope,

all spark without the flame.

*

You call my name -

the old one,

the one that fit me when the world was still small enough to hold.

I want to tell you:

you were right about some things.

You were wrong about most.

*

You still linger like ghost

The past I want more than my future.

Were you braver, or just louder?

Were you wiser, or simply whole?

I wonder, sometimes, if I left you there

or if you left me.

*

We scaled the spines of ungrown trees,

planted flags in places we hadn't reached,

named each rock as if it would stay,

carved a map in bright blue crayon,

but the rain came,

and the paths all washed away.

*

Somewhere between now and then, it blurred to grey

the road bent until it forgot where it was going.

Somewhere, the clocks kept moving even when we begged them not to.

Somewhere, I stopped looking over my shoulder for you.

*

We are different now.

We are still becoming -

ghosts threading the gap between who we were

and what we could never hold.

Still answering to names no one else remembers,

still reaching, reaching,

fingers brushing across the dark,

never quite finding each other,

never quite letting go

*

Somewhere between now and then,

I lost the maps I drew back then.

Notes:

This probably isn’t my best, but when I read the prompt, all I could think about was change and nostalgia. It just kind of took over. Thank you so much for taking the time to read it!