I Worry About Nothing Because Nothing's On My Mind

“This is the story of two boys in love. Boys who never knew any kind of life but running. Boys who kissed across the train track that carved through what it was they wanted and what they were told they could never have. These boys put their toes to the rails like runners at the starting line. No time for that scuffed shoes, knock-kneed, slow burn kind of love. They had to love fast or the train would catch them. Had to love fast ‘cause they’re no use to anyone dead. It’s the story of a boy named Rebecca— a boy whose skin was drawn up in the wrong size. A boy who spent the winter bringing snowflakes to his mama because he liked the way they gleamed in the light. It’s the story of a boy who hated wearing dresses, a boy terrified of the nothing between his thighs. This boy ran before he could walk and dreamed of the men on Mount Olympus, because they were allowed to be both beautiful and strong. This boy, he swallowed his own heartbeat: grew up in a house where everything he knew about himself had to be wrong. And he fell in love with a shipwrecked clutter of a heart pulled up from the mud, and that bad memory, bent beak, black eye of a boy, he had it for him bad, but he fell in love so good. His is the story of a boy with a home like quicksand. A boy with a papa who loved him well but a papa who loved him bad. Broken home, broken heart boy went looking for love in all the hands he knew could hurt him, because he thought that’s what love actually meant. They say we all go chasing the ghosts of our fathers, and this boy, he chased with the worst of the best. Hard knocks, hard head, hard liquor boy. He fell in the love with an angel the next street over: the one everyone called a girl, but he knew better, he loved that boy all the way down to the parts nobody else knew how to love right. He loved that brittle boned, round faced, beauty of a boy— he loved him right. And they were always one flash flood from falling over, a city on its way into the sea, beaten up by the storm off the coastline—a hurricane through the thresholds of their interwoven fingers, love in the sea-sick belly of the beast. They were clasped hands and timid hearts and skinned knees. Life isn’t kind to two boys caught up in dreaming, it doesn’t kiss like lovers at the starting line, but for all their bruised heart, broken arm, split lipped kind of hoping, they held each other like the eye of the storm passing over the rockiest part of the beach. This is the story of two boys in love, who set off for the far corners of the sunset, and ran the rails with the sound of the train at their backs. They’ve never loved like people who could afford to take chances. They love like outlaws on the run, like comets out of orbit, like the lit cherry on the end of a cigarette. They love like they have to. Like they’ve got nothing left. And for them, that’s enough. For them— that’s the best they’ve ever had.”