Breathe [Collection of Short Stories/Spoken Word]

Daniel

tomorrow will be different, I said. maybe we won't come across a gang of detours, and maybe I'll say "screw them", and drive past through. tomorrow will be different, because maybe your butt won't be pushed to the cement floor. Because maybe they thought that suit you better. Maybe I wouldn't have to be forced behind the police line tape because I was too afraid. not because of them, but because of the little reputation I had left. Stupidly enough, we had always listened to what they had said, and their exact words were the reason we cried in bed. Tomorrow will be different, you say - that perhaps as we drive along the way to school, that we wouldn't meet up with the punches and the knuckles and the pain - it was always the pain.

Dear Daniel, remember the day before Christmas break when you gave me that snow globe? Not a day later, it had broke - just like our hearts. That snow globe was enough to tell me that despite my quiet mouth and despite my doubts, you forgave me. Even if you were too ignorant, or perhaps too desperate to notice.

Dear Daniel, remember when we were sitting down in the lunchroom, waiting for our teacher to pick us up? Remember that girl, surrounded by the common mess-ups of our school, who had pushed you to the ground? Remember me, who didn't utter a word, when right in front of my eyes your sense of reality was becoming a blur? We said today would have been different, that maybe we could have avoided these detours. And look at you, Daniel, with your butt on the floor.

Daniel, my dear friend Daniel, even if I wasn't there to save your day or become your school superhero, no matter the ways our hearts broke and a matter of moments until the teachers came to separate you and the detour we could have avoided, no matter the bent formation of our friendship, no matter my avoiding's from you because I thought you finally took a hint and finished. Continuing to watch you suffer as today I realize that I was being selfish, will you listen to my words? That maybe even if we aren't exactly as free as we wished to be, our eyes are still open and we can still see.

No one built courage like his. Daniel built an armor crafted from Zeus's bolt, foundation smoothed from Gaia's mold, Daniel stood right back up no matter the words he had been told.

Dear Daniel, I was there forced to watch five against one, watching you run away from them, and today I cry - why wasn't I there running with you? We could have fallen together, with the back of our heads rooted on the concrete floors and eyes looking at blue. I could have been there, Daniel, there with you. We could have suffered and ignore the doubts that maybe their words weren't true, that maybe if I were there with you too... you would still be alive.