Always Together

When we were young, we played together. In the kitchen, rolling biscuits for his mammy, In the backyard, chasing chickens until the rooster came after us. He was the adventurer, I the faithful companion. He was the instigator, I the excited follower. We were always together. Children know nothing of the world. They cannot see the boundaries that our lives must conform to. They blissfully ignore the fences that keep us in, The walls that prevent us from running away. We had to grow up. I went to school, and learned to see color. One day, I came home. He sat in the kitchen, shelling peas. I sat down beside him to help, as I always had. And I realized that the two pairs of hands that reached into the bowl were not the same color. He realized what I had realized. Things were never the same. The years passed on by. His mammy kept cooking for my family, He kept maintaining the gardens and running errands. Every so often, we would look at each other And remember. But we hardly spoke. I wished we could be friends again, That things could be what they had always been. As I grew older, I wished for even more. His dark eyes would meet mine, And I would wish harder. We could never be together, I knew. Life was the way it was. But I could feel a current stirring, A restlessness growing around me. Could it sweep away the old ways And change them? I was not sure, But I hoped it could. So that we could always be together.