Don’t Cry About It

He lights my cigarette as we stand beneath the white glow of a late autumn moon. The night is otherwise dark and quiet except for our breathing and the scratch of our boots against the pavement as we walk. We are at that point where you think you know everything about each other but you can still spend hours chatting and goofing around like we did at the beginning. It doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world that two people could stick it out so long and sometimes it doesn’t even make sense to us but here we are strolling home merrily intoxicated and just high enough as the tiny stars flare up above, watching us make our way across the deserted overpass. If someone would have told me long ago that this would be the way my life went I wouldn’t have believed them. But then again I rarely believed anyone who told me anything when I was young. You just sort of stumble your way ahead hoping for the best and watching your back for the worst. I have been through some terrible shit in my many days and nights here on this planet which by every turn on its crooked axis seems increasingly hellbent on destruction and loneliness, but the very worst would be if I ever ran out of words. If the writing were ever to shrivel up and die I would have no choice but to lay down and die right along with it. There is love and there is pain but poetry cuts through all of it and makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, for a brief few magical moments, something inside of you is bigger than all the cities blinking across the globe strung together, wider than the widest sun-soaked ocean, more infinite and intimate than the one tiny heart which aches to send its hopeful signals across all space and time and will never be known to anyone as dearly and tragically and beautifully as it is known to you.