melted

long gone sean

he was frail and stickly, a stickler for proper grammar and an advocate of mildly improper behavior, he was the boy who taught skiing and painted sets and adjusted his beanie just so in the middle of classes, he was filled with opinions and thoughts and hopes and dreams and wonder, he was unsure of who he was and so in a split second he was not.

now they are not the boy they once were, they are not a boy at all, or so they say, i never properly affiliated myself with the crowds they ran with, the whole lot of them, their pluralistic behavior emulated by a singular entity, grammar precise and perfect, passing by in an instant as the snow flurries across their blue-streaked hair, the world is not black or white like the snow and the skis but it is pathetically drenched in bright tacky colours all trying to stand out, they say the world is gray and they say that they are themselves but i can only see the brightness fighting for attention, their parents see the brightness in their eyes when they talk these days, they smile with a boy's response flickering in their retinas, their parents don't completely understand, and neither do i, but since they get upset i keep quiet, because they are still my friends, multiple.

when i talk about them now i get lost in my sentences, trying to make sense of the sentiments i have been sent, they are worth the world but not worth the worst of it, i tell them every day until i am coughing out the words, they've become phlegm stuck in my throat (the words, not the person,) they breathe in and take the world in at their own understanding, they are not right or wrong but they are gray, gray, gray, and the colours stain my hands as i try to pick them back up again, the flags they stand for are jumbled in my head, the wrong pronoun slips out and they say nothing, the classmates ask me about them but there is nothing to say, because they are not him.

i was told their old name was dead and gone, i had been informed that it was a lost cause (i had never been fighting for anything in particular,) i understood and nodded until they faded away, i forgot about who they once were until this morning, i have been gifted with a shifted vision, blocked by gray ash and gray thoughts.

i don't miss him. i miss his smile.