“What? Yeah. Snowflake liberals want you to think—”

“You’re saying that. To me. Now.” I was losing my shit. “Knowing what I went through. What happened with—

“Why I can’t get over—”

He said he hadn’t known about that…

So yeah.

The ole man convo wudn’t too productive.

Worse, it set me back; I rage-scratched another layer of roid-weakened skin off my forehead and -arms, restarting the whole cycle.

3

SCHOOLBOY

October 2018

N was a bestie from way back, from abroad in London, when we were flatmates our junior undergrad years.

A year after I quit sports and committed whole hog to that Art Life.

Right after I’d met, but before I in-earnest fell in with, ex bae.

Not in-earnest falling in with ex bae till I’d gone abroad, fucked around, then returned.

London marked that first Young Death; that first Fall.

N, that year, had been integral to easing my way into this transition.

That no-sex bf I could talk to the same as I could a bae. About whatever tf.

His ole man also dipped when he was ten or eleven, remarried; while his ma, like mine, stayed and stayed single.

And although we’d never lived in the same place since that semester—he’d gone to a different college stateside, then straight into grad school for a poetry PhD—we’d kept up a consistent and thorough email thread over the seven-or-so years.

But he was moving to Philly this month! he told me, over email, last month.

Philly, by foot, over the two years since I’d returned, had been reduced to like three places.

Three routes.

Especially so lately, now that I could no longer bike.

Everywhere with even the faintest whiff of a pre-walk ex bae memory too treacherous, unless whizzing past.

Philly had become: along 41st to the Sunoco on Baltimore (cheapest tobacco in town), to pit-stop at Clark Park there for a bench cig, and back—detours off of which included the Fresh Grocer, CVS, roomie bro’s and, now, the dental school.

To the Wawa SE of my spot, that I rarely walked to since it was ex bae’s way.

And…

Wait yeah.

That was basically it.

That was Philly.

But then N pulled up.

And with him, the vicarious newness with which he saw the city.

We recorded a pod in the graveyard south of Baltimore, that I hadn’t been back to since getting locked inside with ex bae, way back when, and having to circle its perimeter, as twilight became night, till we finally found a traversable wall.

We went to a reading at the Kelly Writers House, that I’d never been to since it was on UPenn’s campus and UPenn meant ex bae meant I steered clear at all costs, unless forced, by Postmates, to deliver something there.