By Katie Arrosa

Had I known you
the summer before high school
in muggy mornings,
waving away gnats
we’d have stalked frogs
torn around on bikes
and started a band.
Let’s make up names,
draw a logo,
and get instruments:
we can BOTH play guitar.

Damn, your wild flashes would’ve fit
just right with mine.
We’d stash bang snaps
in ratty denim pockets
and do cartwheels
around 14th-birthday bonfires.
We’d smash every button because
for fun is a good reason
and why not is a complete sentence.
I’d double-dare you
to eat TWO Mega Warheads
just to see.

For this long indoor winter
of breeding dust bunnies,
adventures only happened
in movies I watched alone.
But you finally kicked down the door
on our mutual hump day
so even though white wires scatter our scalps
tonight, it smells like spring.
I’m old enough to know
late beats never
so let’s raise hell.
You and I have so many songs to make up
while we throw long shadows
standing up on bike pedals.
It’s still nice out at dusk.

About the Author

Katie Arrosa writes technical content for money and experiments with words, art, and multimedia for fun. She performs standup comedy tailored for punk-rock people; interviews her most fascinating friends; writes short fiction, how-to guides, and fun short essays; makes JavaScript toys; and experiments with digital art software to make pretty and/or marketable assets. You can see artifacts of these adventures on her website, katiearrosa.com.