The dust we kicked up on this beaten path, no longer sore against the unsoftened soles of my numb feet, will brush by my beam of bright, the wake of my flashlight, from an old friend's seventh birthday. I'll whisper the words of a song I shouldn't know, a song I only know from the clumsy dance we choreographed before you moved away. Now my feet will tread this path and my lips will morph into the shape of these words, these yells that echo from the s'mores, s'more, some more, from your picnic table. You'll stand on the benches with plastic forks and knives as microphones and karaoke blasting from your friend's phone, and you can only tolerate to hear a few decades of seconds of a song before trashing it for the next one you'll belt, stirring up my nostalgia as I pass through in a haze, disappear on the other side, disappear down the beaten path, away, away, away. Off the beaten path. You won't know I'm gone, to you I was never there anyway. The benefit of being invisible, although invisible is far too clichéd, is that you can break rules and hide away and no one will rat you out, although no one will be there for you, either.
At the lake the sun cast the water in a bright light my eyes forced themselves to tire away from, and I craved. Craved adventure, a real life. Not this lightless prison cell of everything I don't understand. Craved to be out there, tumbing off paddleboards and lying back in the waves and exploring the island with you. I dreamed, and the song from the picnic table of what I wanted and hated most at the same time was gone, gone, gone. Then they came for me, told me I had to come back. I did not meet their eyes. What I did do, was return, although the sun had already set and the milky way was the vividest I'd seen in my life. I returned when they all forgot about my again, when I became another mere pair of feet along the beaten path once more, just another figure in their swelled wake, their clouded midst. It did not take long for them to forget. I returned when they quietly shunned me to become a shadow again, and I laid back by the lake, where I wasn't allowed to go. I saw my first shooting star.
At the lake the sun cast the water in a bright light my eyes forced themselves to tire away from, and I craved. Craved adventure, a real life. Not this lightless prison cell of everything I don't understand. Craved to be out there, tumbing off paddleboards and lying back in the waves and exploring the island with you. I dreamed, and the song from the picnic table of what I wanted and hated most at the same time was gone, gone, gone. Then they came for me, told me I had to come back. I did not meet their eyes. What I did do, was return, although the sun had already set and the milky way was the vividest I'd seen in my life. I returned when they all forgot about my again, when I became another mere pair of feet along the beaten path once more, just another figure in their swelled wake, their clouded midst. It did not take long for them to forget. I returned when they quietly shunned me to become a shadow again, and I laid back by the lake, where I wasn't allowed to go. I saw my first shooting star.
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