you once asked me, "when we first met, what did you see in me?" and the answer is more complicated than you would think. what did i see? i saw a beaten down boy - sad to the core - but with passion in your eyes previously unseen. it would be easier to tell you what i didn't see.

there were the sleepless nights and the wildfire lies. songs about me and songs about everything but me and guess what, the second type hurt the most. the soul-searching gaze and the warmth of the blaze of fire from that cabin in bismarck. i loved you back then, too.

at first we were young and angry and i got my eye blacked for speaking back. and you were writing postcards and i kept one because you're like a living poem, you are; and i was breathlessly, endlessly, hopelessly in love with you.

i didn't see the nights spent apart from you. the times i would lie awake on my friend's couch and stare at the ceiling and wonder if you would still care if i showed up tomorrow or if you ever even did. if you'd care if i were dead and for a long time i thought the answer was no but then you came back.

you had dropped the angry kid act. you were a man now with a take-no-blame attitude and connecting to your line of view at that party, god, it was like the war between heaven and hell erupted in my chest but

i still loved you.

and i had someone and so did you but sometimes i think we're like electric coils, we have to feel the spark before we can burn out properly - but seeing you and her put green in my chest for far longer than i'll admit and even in that too-big apartment, your self-hatred wouldn't fit. and so we skated and talked and you bought that picture of me (i know you did) but somehow the knowledge of my face hiding under your bed, under your clothes, under your brainstem - it haunted me and i never wanted it to stop.

i didn't see all of the hotel nights and ice cream carts and curtains closing. i didn't see your heart imposing on my safe little box.

and we fucked and drank and smoked and we fucked and drank some more and you

you wrote about me.

and you had this little vision in your head and i wanted out because there was no way this was about love, no,

this was about you.

and you did the unthinkable and then threw me out for good but little did i know that you threw yourself out too, and in the winters of machias your coldness grew.

and you gave me the gift of listening kids across the globe and yet i broke our unspoken code and i called myself ROSCOE - a little shoutout to your home. and to mine, i suppose.

and so you found me and the time added up but not the feelings and you travelled but you felt so far away and all i wanted you to do was stay.

i know you thought you were doing the right thing but, fuck, i need you and you need me and we never even got a chance to grieve what we lost from each other before.

i had no way of seeing the sleepless nights now spent holding what was once unattainable. nor did i see the home we built for ourselves or the fireworks on new year's that began our journey as one and as corny as that sounds, we were a disaster but now we are a perfect storm.

june 10th 1974.

my life ended as ours began.