Tell me
What towers still stand in your imagination?
Or have they all collapsed and faded into rubble with your dreams?
Do you still trace faces - on dust covered mirrors in rooms so empty like your own?
Perfect reflections of places you’ve come to haunt like shadows curled up to corners, tracing the memories of generations - etched into wood
Or have the messages and the comfort graffiti come and gone again?
Left you alone to scratch your name into bedposts unfamiliar
Just so you could leave your mark on something too

Do you wake up missing yesterday?
Still long for the days when these towers were a castle, or a jungle, or - whatever else you chose to be that day, the important part was that it was alive and amazing and we were always – together
And back then we were always together
Invading streets like small countries, we took them over one exaggerated step at a time
Tagging our names into trees and fences, we were satisfied that this place was ours and everyone would know it
We were war buddies
We were conquerors
We were children, and for awhile that was good enough for you

Years passed
It was so quick you could have blinked and missed it, and I guess I closed my eyes too soon cause suddenly – you were gone
You were too old for war games
Too mature to conquer the neighborhood
And apparently too good for me, since we stopped talking altogether
So all I could do was watch
Watch as neighbors painted fences, covered up the last signs of our imaginary accomplishments
Watch as this town expanded to add more businesses and buildings, ripped our trees straight from their homes
Watch as you got older and more focused, left childhood behind you without a backwards glance and left yesterday in the dust

Jump forward
Watch the world spin - and twist around me like mercury
Day shifting night shifting day shifting week shifting month shifting year
Shifting year
Shifting year
I’m taller now, bigger than my mother and brother, so tall I could stick my head in the clouds, or at least that’s what I used to think, and every once in awhile I catch myself doing just that
See, imagination never faded from these bones, but grew stronger like saplings do
This head is filled with fiction, poems, and philosophy – the fruits of my labor

The years haven’t changed me too much
A little less innocent, a little more cynical, a little more sarcastic – I’m a teenager, it comes with the territory
But as I look upon you again after all this time, I can’t say the same

You are weary, shrunken in from all the pressure reality has forced on you
I doubt you could stand straight if you wanted to
Your knuckles are sore and cramped - signing your name on sheet after sheet of paper work has left you distasteful of the syllables
As I mention our old adventures, reliving castles, mountains, battles, and jungles – your eyes screw shut, you look pained for all of a moment

In your head, I see the cities that have replaced our old world
I see corporate America in all its slick tall glory of gleaming metal and glass
I see rust gathering in every corner as you’ve slowly become spiteful of the life you’ve built, replacing fences for bedposts to carve your name into
Letting the trees rot, and change into memos and bills

I can see the mirrors of your eyes - as you open them, dusted over in weariness, trying to trace a message screaming ‘help me to live again’
Left alone without defense, you yourself have been conquered
I can see all of this just before you reply
“I can’t remember.”

I respond sincerely
“I’m sorry.”