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yet, still i stand, you sweaty runner up. what i’d do just to have you beam me that wily look at my age now. our eyes spoke dense novels. they sang Lonesome Doves. you were the only one to ever see through me and oh how priceless the ardor. no else one has me figured out even now. in bed with my feet up on the wall like a giddy idiot just picturing your mouth and your curls. ivory throat and ivory eyes.

 

i wanted you so fucking desperately that i was disquiet. i didn't wear socks that whole summer traversing the boroughs. you always made me wash my feet prior to coitus, it was so humiliatingly holy. i hung dong to make you laugh and ease up. our first intimate moments: fucking on your building's roof. and we had an audience, peering eyes through their windows from darkened apartments. i loved you so much during that first drunk and pally 2-story copulation. i flung my condom to the next roof and you scolded me. slipping my fingers inside you on that tire swing, i reached nirvana. i taught you how to put condoms on foreskin, but you wouldn’t give freely your fluids. i only gazed upon your asshole a few times and kissed it but once over those long sultry months.

 

you loved Next Generation like a ginuwine woman oughta. so precious is your commodity, your physicality. all i wanted was to listen to you talk and to watch you out there perspiring under the lights. i wanted to know you. your guts. your everything. the whole shebang. what made you shit and sob and berserk and embarrassed? how much do you still love pasta? i love your juicy thighs, they're more succulent now with some age, as is your astonishing ass.

 

is your stoicism hiding bitterness? is bitterness not taking me seriously? i don’t care if you don’t touch me anymore just please keep looking at me. some nights i still dream of you. your mud and moss colored eyes. it was always there in our shared stares at each other just hanging out with our clique. it was so loud. it was so knowing. it wasn't so secretive, actually. she knew i was in love with you the entire time i was with her. you felt so familiar to me, and that was hard to hide. chasin' waterfalls and stinky armpits.

 

now i like the tattoo i teased you about back then. "anchor's away" i say. you look kinda military now, except for your hair. always breathtaking your french raw umber locks. i want to know what makes you change your hair. i'm infatuated with it. is it a boy? is it a sign from above? is it a performance? you were rolling and curling and flowing, not stomping. what morning meals do you eat when you travel? are you watching your weight? do you need to watch your weight? it doesn’t really seem like it. you could beat me up and i could eat you up. your gravity creates moonlets. you never moved a muscle absent grace.

 

my mom mispronounced your name every goddamn time with a ‘ner’ 'stead of a ‘nor’ and she perished ten thousand and one different ways in my head for the crime. i lost so many photographs of us. it was never the right timing. when you finally said "come with me to the magic room."  your overly pillowed nest. a taffeta explosion. your mood lighting. your rabbit warren. you’re kicking me out because the sun is coming up. i know there are a million miles between feeling good and knowing what to say.

 

i wanted to be seen with you. did you want to be seen with me too? can we still teach each other things? i think so. we always butted heads, and that was the amusing contest. but you always remembered my Taurus birthday for years afterward, and we'd talk a little on the phone. you invited me up to the city. but how would it even be if i did come up? would you have me as you did before? you’re so busy and i really admire that. they write about your art and how you move your body. and we all witnessed you flush and glowing before us. oh, how that’s youth. but is it youth i really want? because we were young but you were so bent.

 

i didn’t follow you after right college like i promised. but we did catch up at long last. i think i chose wrong back then. i wasn’t thinking. so many phonies got in our way. maybe they weren’t phonies. my old and beloved friend. i thought somehow we would circle back after all the years and share a bed again, even if but for one night. i love you. are you with someone? is it me or you who was the sweaty runner up?

Late Shoving Penalty/Drunk on the Roof

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