おひさしぶりです

* This poem is about friendship, and how it stays true regardless of distance and the passage of time. It also speaks about the stupidities and idyllic simplicities of youth.


Time and space my friend, are disillusioned constructs of the mind. Resonating on our earthly densities, a lower vibration.

One day away, three years gone by. It doesn't matter when we're talking down the crackling phone.
One floor above, then across campus, and finally over by the Burger King. You left five years later in the month of December.
DTW to NRT, my last glimpse of you on a cold, rainy day. My all puts on a brave face and you put on that shirt. That shirt of yours, looking like Ernie in all of those stripes.

A year before the exit, I came to your subterranean collagic bunker. Bare in some ways, but filled in others, with half eaten ramen of your homeland, and clouds of stale smoke. The Carpenters playing softly behind, their melancholy ditties, and you laugh that un-affected laugh of yours, at the television screen. America's Funniest Home Videos. Again.

Marry me I say, with idiotic abandon. "En ga arimasu ne!" えんがありますね！It's destiny!
We'll leave this town, we'll move to New York. Be artists and snowboarders, and foolish and young. In our red brick loft of minimalist cool. Together.
"Dame". だめ。You say with tanned arms made into an a firm letter "X". Meaning in your primordial way, most definitely "NO" I will not.

I had a distant, poisonous boyfriend and you had a distant, questionable girlfriend. But still...if not now I countered, then when?
I was ready to try out slightly immoral for a change.
My beautiful special, your magnetic pull, that quiet face that understood me without asking, that soft heart that didn't need to try. My best friend for no reason other than.

Jagged rocks, the cliffs of the years. I slipped off the side, damn algae overgrowth.
You flew away. We grasp at the occasional. Sigh, I still have memories, and the moon like Fievel Mousekewitz did.
My Gang Starr album plays over the speakers, and suddenly we're in the car again, top down, taking in a shimmery red sunset. And the world is good, and warm and clear for those uncomplicated moments.
The stars appear above and you tell me about your life Yamanashi once again. And we talk, sharing a hybrid language of frienship into the night.

Time made me old, stress made you too.
"I'm not ok" you say in the email, sent boldly from cell .
Just like in the movies, just like the it's supposed to be, my chest tightens, sweat starts to bead, my mind a violently racing wonder whale, to thoughts of you in danger.

I call.
10-10-220
Crackling line again. The foreign voicemail.
I try repeatedly.
My heart is sinking.
I wish I could fly. Over our great land of American decay and across the chill of the Pacific Ocean.
So long San Francisco, goodbye Alaska, we pass the most western outposts. My saru さる needs my help!

It's a long night. No answer, no email, no text. No mind.
I wait....awake before dawn and try again.......in silence.
I go through the morning motions, you in my worried thoughts.
Surprised I have it in me to care across space and time this intently. To care unconditionally.
Like a Mother Theresa, a Donna Reed, my inner capacity revealed.

And finally something comes down the wire, a simple note, in broken English. You are safe, not good, but safe. I breath.
$808.00 to Narita on Northwest. I contemplate the jump.

My life grounds me here, but part of me, the higher part that shines and glistens with the dew in the dawn light, it's there with you too, in Yamanashi my friend.　おひさしぶりです。おひさしぶりで。