i still search for you in the places i go

hoping to see you; a familiar face once again.

today i walked through the halls expecting to meet you, where you forever stood— but the man i saw wasn’t you;

instead a past image of the person i once knew.

and if i could i would walk to the end of the earth to find you again.

and we will sit like past versions of us once did, under the sky— watching as the morning breaks ahead.

nothing in my mind except for you,

shining times so long ago.

i truly miss you old friend.

Today it snowed for the first time this winter. We had classes but you woke up early, so of course I did too. 

"Let's skip today," you said. "This day is too special to waste on classes." 

I protested. I had no work that was more important than normal, but I did not want to make it up later. I did not want to be caught skipping. I did not consider classes a waste of time. But then I saw you bobbing by the window, eyes sparkling, jaw agape, watching the flakes as if you had never seen snow before. 

I canceled my classes, called in sick. I put on my jacket and warm hat and followed you into the snow. 

You insisted on putting the first footprint in the snow. Then you ran about, dragging me to a field where the lovely white blanket was laid out before me. "Dance," you told me. "That field needs footprints." 

It almost broke my heart to touch the snow. You nudged me, with your body, or your laughing eyes, I do not remember. At first skeptically, I moved, but then faster, and faster, and you dancing beside me.

Snow is so soft, yet it is made of rock. Every time I remember snowflakes are small crystals of ice, water in its solid state, I am knocked over again by this ridiculous world. In a way it is like sand. I tell you this as you flop back to make a snow angel. You smile as if I have given you the sun. 

The snow is so white. Light reflects over and over though the imperfect edges of the ice. I think about purity, how often our ideas of it cause shame. Of impurity meaning filthy. Of the impurity of the ice crystals that allow the snow to almost glow, even after sunset, collecting the rays of a disappearing star and illuminating your laughing face. Of the field of snow, not broken, but alive with our footfalls and laughter. Of you.

There are so many people who would call you impure. Who would wish you to be ashamed. You swear like a sailor, take great joy in sex, take up so much space, indeed all the space of my world, without even seeming to know it. You have never followed anything you could not see the evidence for. Yet, as you dance through the falling rocks, trying to catch them on your tongue, the wonder in your eyes has an intensity so pure I would fall at your feet in worship, of it, of you, of the world's light you are reflecting back into my eyes. 

     I am having a dream about the senior class graduating.

     It is a beautiful day

     And I am watching from a hill

     Sobbing as the hats fly off

     Now the graduates get up and cartwheel across the field,

     Away from me,

    Away,

  Away,

Away.