text: We were out of the blue and into the black. We had traveled such a long way and still found ourselves in the same spot as always. We sat on a bench. The air was cool and the sky was dark, neither of us knew how long we'd been out there. Only that by the time we returned we were asking for trouble. I could barely see the distance to the street light, yet the moon lit up your face perfectly. As though it were designed specifically to do so. Your eyes sparkled and reflected the light back into mine. The way they always had. The way they always pierced through darkness in order to find me. Your lips were purple and puckered around the butt of a cigarette. They way they too, always had. Your nose, a perfect ski slope. You knew entirely too well that you were my idol. That you were my friend. That I loved you more than anything else, including myself. I depended on you for life, because you had always been there to save it. I depended on you for clarity, because I spent too much time fogging up my lenses. You never questioned why I had the obsessions I did. You only asked to hear more. I told you about my life, my family, my dreams, my future, and my pain. You were more difficult. You basked in the mystery that your perm-frown gave off. You kept everything hidden. You spoke of things in a vague sense. The future would be great, but I'd never learn why. Nothing was ever fast enough for you. These nights, nights just like this, sitting on an icy bench in the middle of a cold November. This is what I lived for. Endless conversation, pure liberation. It was the one thing I always knew I could count on. You were the one person I always knew I could count on. If everything else turned to shit, we would still have us and this bench, those swings, this park. You needed more, and I always envied the drive. If you could embrace change and move on why couldn't I? What was it that kept me tied to this park bench for so many years? Why wasn't this the kind of thing I could force myself to get behind. Why I did place such a high importance on nostalgia? Why did everything that happened here, years before you, seem to have such a power over me? All of these questions lead to the excruciating one.