Boyhood Bravery

I met him on the corner, in the middle of a fork in the street. Rain was pouring, blurring, smudging, eroding the lines of everything I thought I had ever known. His hair clung to his forehead, thin fingers pale and shaking from the cold. I asked him for a smoke, his chocolate eyes seeming to melt in confusion, concern. "They're bad for you," he said, I told him that I wasn't scared to die. I looked in his eyes and found myself falling, hole opening up within my chest, echoing hope, a chance - all in his eyes. I cracked, everything pouring out of me all at once, word vomit spewing forth in a fit of vulnerability but somehow I knew that was okay, with him, that I was a single celled dot on the planes of the universe and maybe he could join me sometime. We fell together that night, twisted up in a tangle of my blankets, his head on my chest and arms around my stomach. We fell together that night and I knew there was no going back.