just a dream

If it's true what they say, and the boy I love is gone, I'll never have a love like this again. One that opened up the world before me, yet showed me what it felt like to be wanted. Now, I find it ripped unceremoniously from my grasp. Do I just go on living the way things were before? In bleak misery, merely a shadow of the man he created? A man content to die, with nothing to survive for?

Something inside me broke with those fateful words, with Reg’s pitying glances and eyes diverted as I walked by. Something cracked, like porcelain against a stone wall. A thin, undetectable fracture of my sanity, a splinter in reality where all sense and reason leaked out. 

It should have been me, the man with nothing to offer but pent up rage, yet here I find myself sitting beside the corpse of a man the world is infinitely worse without. 

Do I wait in the sands for him, hoping he comes back to me from down below? 

I would gladly sit for eternity right here, in this spot, if it meant laying eyes upon his beautiful face once more. 

Do I face into the rest of my life without him here, by my side? Do I face the wind and the cold without the warmth of his smile?

But if it's true, and there's nothing to be done, I know I will carry him with me always. 

In every sunrise, in every dust cloud and every smirk thrown my way, if such a thing ever happens again. In every handshake and bowl of soup, in every prayer and stupid songs sung over campfires. I’ll think of him each time I lay eyes on this dented cigarette case, the only thing I have left of him, the only tangible thread I have left. Every facet of my life was truly changed by him. 

I'll be on my way, but I won't soon forget the Catholic boy who forever left his mark on my heart. 

With a smile as bright as the sun, and just as warm. Eyes that could never tell a lie and a face that furrowed, betraying how deeply he felt, how deeply he loved and laughed. 

Somehow I don’t know if I could ever accept the truth, even if I heard it from that pretty boy himself. It can’t possibly be right, is this really what the world is? And if it's true, and I must turn away, I will carry him with me always. In the recesses of my mind, in the one tangible connection I have left.

Who are we to say what the truth is anyway? He will be with me on the wind, in every bad choice I make and every dodgy decision. In every question asked to the void. His voice will be there, answering in a way only he can. As a rustling of leaves or a flurry of sand. As a broken manifestation of grief. 

His answer matters more than anything anyone else says, yet his voice will never again carry on the breeze, his warm hand will never again touch my skin…if what they say is true. If he is lost, then I am truly alone now.