It was the summer of 72,

just beyond the previous winter,

I would stay home,

amongst my school friends,

chums, the guys I hung with

all school year.

 

Yet I didn’t know them,

because the 12 summers before,

when I began to remember,

around the age of four,

I’d spent elsewhere

in a different world,

a time zone whose style

didn’t match up

with the hometown crowd.

 

It was there I lost him,

imagine the imbalance in my mind,

a good friend

labeled my survivor guilt one time,

and I haven’t been able

to look past that ever since.

She gave a freedom

to realize life has reasons

and they’re not always mine.

 

So it is then that I reflect upon,

when today, I can barely breathe at all.