The Greatest Adventure

You’re leaving me.

After sixteen years of constant contact,

Secret confidences,

You’ll be gone.

The memories I have of you

Are already blurring,

Obscured by time or tears into a single entity,

As if I am watching the reel of our lives unwind

Like so much tape from an old projector,

And now the reel is spitting and flapping as the film has run out.

Hazy, tinted with rose and gold,

I see us running in your backyard—

Your sixth birthday,

We are fairies,

Flitting among the trees, clutching glow sticks

As a softly purple defense against the growing dusk.

We are twelve, we are pirates,

Swinging swords and walking the plank.

We are fifteen,

Producing a play on your patio,

Relishing the childishness of building castles and dragons,

Playing princesses and wicked stepmothers.

That is done now.

We shared every lunch period,

Walked home from school every afternoon for four years,

Laughing as we shared our days.

That is done now.

Together we rejoiced

In David Bowie, Peter Pan, Shakespeare,

All manners of whimsy.

We share a name

A town

A life

—but they are diverging now.

I must face the world without you,

I must fight my dragons alone.

But, m’lady, I forever fight in your honor.

I’ve had other friends,

Who’ve slipped through the cracks in my life

Disappearing,

Like so many handfuls of sand,

But you are not one of them.

You rooted yourself deep within me,

And I will allow nothing to pull you out again.

My time with you has been more precious

Than anything I have

Or will

Experience.

And though I cannot follow you to Neverland,

You have shown me the way

To keep magic in my life.

“Second star to the right,

And straight on ‘til morning!”

You grinned at me as we stood,

Toes curling,

On the steep section of roof below your bedroom window.

I will never know another like you—

But I have known you,

And I couldn’t ever have dreamed up

A better adventure.