You folded a piece of every story we shared and tucked it in your back pocket for safekeeping. Tonight you held the pieces together like a map and we smiled at the masterpiece. It all leads back to how we can sit in silence and say so much. Cut the boredom because it doesn’t exist here. Tell me everything and nothing at all. Show me growth and giving and grieving and all the things we swore to live without. Last night you told me that you dream about the house I grew up in almost every night. Said it was your safety. It took dying and rebuilding and crashing cars and bloodied lips to understand what flourishes from a broken heart and remarkable smile. A young girl who was wide eyed and barely brave. A story about how I took every sad song and played it on repeat until the words meant nothing to everyone else around me. How you kept those pieces I threw in the trash and called it treasure. I think back to us sitting at the end of my driving drinking shitty vodka out of a plastic bottle. The cement crumbled beneath our feet and you made me promise to never fix it. How you said that leaving this town was life or death for you. How this home was the only one you’ve ever known. How your dreams will never be the same because this place has a way of following you. Nightmares and all. -AMT©️