A Leisurely Ode to my Friend from the North

I remember us, once

building a castle
out of wooden blocks
and finding it easy to visualize
a dragon being born at sundown.

Once shoveling to break the dam.
Once running down ghosts with sticks.
We hungered for the chase,
the daredevil run, the toilet paper
plasterings and scribbled drawings
on the inside wall of the biffy,
all in the name of fun.

The phone was necessary to reach you
then. And now again.

If I had known that you played viola,
I would have offered you seriously
to attend the Conservatory, but I made you into a joke.
‘hey you should come to saint paul conservatory with me
haha teehee like you would’
is how it plays out in my mind,
though I don’t think you mind.

And from there rolled down high school,
barreling furiously towards adulthood,
a dirty metropolis at the foot of the hill.
The same bus lunch bus schedule
giving us solidarity.

I started finding the pencil interesting,
it seemed like an interesting fact then.
You never held your viola with love
but then again, you and I both knew
that we didn’t know what that looked like.

I had a girl sometimes
but it still felt like somehow we had no one.
That was our big secret, wasn’t it.

The reason most people knew you before seeing you,
because my mouth was loud with warm breath.
But that was something that hardly mattered,
you knew something you had no warrant to share:
your friends were better than mine.

And not until I was sick and sniffling with soup
cupped in my hands, I wandered to the knoll
to find you among them,
but I could not shake their hands.

Plans were scrawled on napkins,
fantasizing skin-packed Florida and all the warmth
of the sun stirred up in the sands.
You missed a meeting and I spoke for you.
The pizza was good, but we’ve had better.

Well, then you saw the ocean,
draped in darkness, for the very first time,
and our feet outran our shoes on that coast.
The only night we slept in beds
I told you to not open your mouth
when swimming in the ocean,
and the next morning you forgot.

Spring laid down parallel tracks,
setting a pattern in metal and stones.
We made ceremonies out of smoking cigars
and had little use for cars
except to drive down 42nd and turn right.

The kid who refused to wear headgear
taught me how to smoke a cigarette,
in the Perkins parking lot
after a long couple cups of coffee.

The boy who watched cars with me
out of the bus window
watched me smoke out of a bowl
for the first time, and saw me
slipping through the wormholes
on the forest floor.

I waited for you for that first glass,
but you were late, I hardly regret it.
You slept next to me with the kitchen
rug as your blanket.
My first hangover I was laughing.

We turned around
together, facing the audience
who at once jumped and shouted
that we did it, we have made it,
“Welcome to the end of the hill!”

Hell yes we did it,
throwing our feet on the dashboard,
cruising farther than west of Minneapolis,
sporadically leaving restaurants
to make distance stretch across the cities.

College was a certainty.
Summer no less of a sentence.

We overdid, plummeted,
pocketed good feeling
and left days open ended.

You guarded the door for me at parties
while I momentarily forgot you.

I sat on a bathroom floor for hours
while you forgot how to move.

We had cigarette breaks
on the buggy beach at Long Lake,
at the propane tanks of SuperAmerica.

It was a long walk from the foot of the hill to the city.

Now I’m here, it’s barren and cool.
But I’m sure that where you are
it’ll be enough to freeze a bottle of beer.

So with my phone off the hook,
I have summoned you.
Let’s light up our shadows on the docks
and laugh at our lonely personalities
and continue to forever ignore the clock.

Boys like us need still company.

Also, you went to church more than me.

I've seen you baptized, I have proof that you believe.

At least always in me.