bestie

Multiple hours cocooned in third-rate airplane seats,

knees knocking into neighbors, arriving while my brother’s

luggage was leaving, all I wanted was to sleep until someone

old and distinguished handed me a diploma.

The next morning sunlight was catching up with

my sanity, hair raked back like crumbling leaves,

carting bodies to the white home in the green,

prepared to excavate for my college dinosaurs.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Breakfast has always seemed like an innocent meal,

until the metaphorical bacon was fried and eaten

and you arrived, almost by accident, a familiar stranger

willing to dig and carry years of accidental accumulation—

mostly books, The Republic of Poets and Tracy K. Smith

and The Lord of the Rings and All the Light We Cannot See

filling your waiting arms as I apologize profusely

for the weight of my English degrees. You just smile.

And then I’m rising from the basement and being

ushered to the light at the end of the tunnel,

a car more like a space shuttle or rocket than

a traditional mode of transportation.

And although it seems at odds with your gentle eyes

and runaway black hair, you suddenly become an astronaut,

catapulting us into the milky highway at eternal speeds

that sear my eyes shut with the rapid contest against light.

I always secretly wanted to traverse the solar skies with someone like you.