I will ask if you’re okay and give you
permission to tell me the truth,
the whole sorry, harrowing,
despairing, disarming truth
and you’ll give me the same
liberties in return.
I’ll accept your words
as your reality, no judgement.
We are friends who
are free, who
are human
in the most
brutal ways, we
see the things others
avert their eyes from, we
experience life like we’re on
fire, like it’s about to end, like
we’re on the run and we feel
it in our backs, in the
fractures, in the
curl of our spines as
we feel the weight of our
baggage and we fight it, fight it, fight it.
We are young and strong in all the best ways,
we adventure, we have fear, we are
misguided and we don’t care. This is how
we write our stories, with every
step, with every journey,
with every tattoo,
with every exhale.