The way their reds intertwine with their golden oranges and hues of blue with their temperature—warm, laughing, sleeping, waking, weeping.

Heaping; piles of love so high fibers are spilling out like silly string, and fingers high said the kid, tongues out. Black ringlets now, matching darkened irises—dark circles. Inside and out—a certain outpatient, nowhere to go, yet everywhere it runs.

Now, if we change the pronouns, fighter, athlete, troublemaker, my lover—a lover—of all things running rampant through the fibers, fibers its soul.

Find its archetype, wax dripping from the spoon and seal pressed down, embellished, marked, branded. Make anger make haste, notice the lack of separation with a comma, beat red, amber, become alerted, become awake. Come alive in the summer, the springtime, check out otherwise, or check it in, zone in, what’s important, or of importance, carrying importance in swollen sweatshirt arms? Academics. Smart and lonely, its thoughts take up too much space, too much time, no pavement to explore or follow.

It knew from the beginning who it was but didn’t know if it could be what it was. The only thing that mattered was that it knew, but that cracked and crumbled; cascading into chasms with sides slicked with ash, turning clay, turning muddy, turning brown.

Using others to make itself feel better about everything in its life that sucks, rotating with the stars and they all fall down, broken glass on the sidewalk with faces of old friends there to point out where it went wrong.

But was it a path of misfortune or mistake, to grow or to decay, pick a season, pick its poison, spreading like black tar and stopping the blood flow to its heart and desiccating?

I was your age once, there are a lot of things I wish I did but didn’t, sneaking out to a rock concert, how did it go? Your fun is my fun, it’s almost like we’re connected. I’ve known you my whole life after bumping into you, groceries flying, apples to apples. You’re the good guy of one narrative and the bad in someone else’s life, but I know you too well, so much so that it—that’s it.