two boys

Two boys sat one night and talked away their lives. Morning came knocking sooner than they’d imagined and took them away. They soared high above the rest and noticed the sun shine on them and heard drops of rain drum on their yet young wings. They watched the sun rise and set over new villages and old cities. They rested a while on the old branches of the oldest trees, always watching for strangers who would smile at them, and they would speak to the strangers, each separately, and try to find a family. They would spot little huts of pleasure and palaces of shame, knock on the doors, and run away from the pain. They opened their minds sometimes, inside these friendly caverns, and squinted at the light that hurt their unlearned eyes. They waited impatiently for signs from the strangers, of recognition, and for this strange feeling called love. Never could they fathom what it was and what it would do. They loved, without a doubt, and they faced the friends of strangers and they faced the friends they had been given at birth, and never knew what to do. Their hearts told them to change and the forces of a life lived long ago bound them to earth, where they must return. Their paths were not the same but if a poet ever stumbled upon the wasted years that they had painted black then you would see a portrait of each not unlike the other’s.

Two boys sat one day and talked about life. Evening stayed far from the heavy shoulders of those who should have been alive. They showed each other the scars they had bought, two dreams for one. They pulled out pictures from their bags and stories from their pockets, spread on the dusty ground maps of places that were no more. Words came easily to them now; the teachings of the world slept quietly in the vaults of their minds, but always behind the words crept the hollow knocks of prisons and smiles. Music from distant shores came to bid them goodbye but held on, clinging to the toenails of their feet. Many a battle each described, many a battle that had been lost and some that were won. Not one defeat was as bitter as the few victories were sweet. One talked about love and the other friendship, one hoped for neither while both wanted love. Poets came and looked upon these lost souls, watched them flail hopelessly as the world caught up with them and painted portraits streaked with bright oranges and reds that swam all too soon into the blackest of greys. And they poets lost their minds to visions unknown, hoped love would wait, death not so, and they cried tears of bleeding stone for the children that had died.