Once he was just a face on the platform with a beautiful smile as the other on the train pulled away. He wore a rough green uniform, his rifle shouldered, hair short, hat shading his eyes. For a moment until he was gone, everything else was forgotten.
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Once he was a brother, soft and warm, cradled gently in his arms. A being so tiny and beautiful that he couldn't be understood; so wonderful that when he died it made no sense at all.
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Once they hunted together, veins and steel and blood, pulses pounding every moment, noses close to the ground. They slept fitfully in a heap, fur-covered and thickly muscled and pure. They were never caught.
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Once, one of them fancied himself Ginsberg, leaning on his motorbike like a dirty angel, lips curved around a cigarette, blessed and possessive, tugging every way he knew how. Whispering like the poet against flesh in the night, quicksilver in the day. Eyes like teeth.
He slid himself tightly around the life of the other; wormed his way into every crack, broke his neck with a smile. Bit him and cursed him and loved him, violently, digging crescent-shaped into his arms, kissing him soft and then disappearing for days and days and days.
One buried the other under hot red sand, hands blistered and lungs burning, unused to the presence of pain and regret in his eyes.
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Once they made music and remained competitive even as the slide of bows turned to flesh.
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Once, they never met at all.
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And once, they were the way they were; one a beast and the other a star, keeping different paces.
One lived shortly, burning, turning all he touched to ash, and walked out of life in an instant.
The other lived too slow by far; kept a flame close to his breast and carried it all his long days as he begged, desperately, to follow.
In begging he remembered summers from eons ago, when they were young and stupid, not really remembering but creating them anew as perfect; the holidays, the single trip to the beach they managed; the days in bed when they were older and fate dealt them a Sunday morning, free.
He twisted his hands as in the background of his life the baby fussed and warbled and his young wife took its tiny arms in her grasp. He thought, What if it had been different, indulgently; pushing down guilt for a moment to preserve the fantasy for as long as he could.
What if they'd lived another life; a closer life; a more perfect version of the present, never ruined by time or action or luck. What if they'd grown old and died together, and everything wasn't such a fucking mess of random events that made no fucking sense at all. What if he'd leapt after; been more selfish. What if he'd had the strength and the cowardice to leave everything behind.
It was then that he would leave, quietly, while the baby slept. Open the door and walk down the street and stumble around for hours, sometimes drunk, most often not. He'd find his way back sometimes, to the streets where they'd kissed in the early hours, to the pubs where they'd laughed, the remnants of their life together strewn across the pavements like corpses. He'd feel lost, immersing himself in what felt like a life he'd never even lived.
It was easier to walk the places they had never been together and invent what they'd never had, though the images never lasted long. It was easier to imagine a chance that had never existed than to realise that, really, they'd never had a chance at all.
