Simpler Times
1985 Simpler times .. perhaps… but not always easy…
When a friend moved
The move didn’t announce itself
it just happened
like a rib gone missing
One day we were there…
knees dusty
palms scraped
passing a bike between us
drinking water straight from the hose
metal cold n’refreshing…
Remember rubber tasting like summer?
Then a truck came
and the street forgot a home…
No warning
No way to reach across it
So we wrote letters
n’paper still knew how to travel
Ink leaned heavy bruised black & blue
trying to sound like a voice
trying to remember laughter
Addresses learned by heart
not by saving
by repeating them slow
so they wouldn’t slip away
The mailbox became a quiet altar
I stood by it
breath held
listening for the clang
Days took longer then
Time didn’t glide…
it dragged heel n’sole on cracked sidewalks
When the letter arrived
it weighed more than it should
Smelled like a different room….
different air…
like life continuing without us
Their handwriting reached first
before the words
before the ache could brace itself
It wasn’t just soul
t’was breath sent in ink
learn’n how to leave the body
and come back to me.
Connection without proof
Love without witnesses
Staying
after leaving
I still feel it
that tight place
where goodbye didn’t end
it stretched
Where distance hurt
because it was real
and love hurt
because it refused to vanish
The hose still runs somewhere
cold water
rusted taste
summer unthinking
And every time I drink memory
straight from the source
it takes my breath away
~~~~~~~
Before iPhones, before screens, before permission,
there were envelopes ✉️ and crayons 🖍️
and words tryin ta learn ta stand.
I still write that way…
small tools, honest marks, nothing fancy.
If you’d like to support my crayon habit,
there’s a button below. 🖍️
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This is so tender. It captures that first quiet grief when distance enters a childhood friendship and nothing can stop it.
“Like a rib gone missing” lands immediately. The loss feels physical. The dusty knees, the rubber taste of summer, the cold metal of the hose — those details make it lived rather than remembered from far away.
The mailbox as an altar is especially moving. Standing there, breath held, waiting for the clang. Letters trying to sound like a voice. Ink carrying breath across distance. You show how connection found a way to stretch, even when it couldn’t stay the same.
I love that you don’t force closure. The ending suggests love did not vanish. It changed form. It still lives in the body, in memory, in the simple act of drinking cold water and being taken back.
There is something very honest here about how distance hurts because what we had was real. That truth is what makes this piece linger.
Nothing says childhood like memories of drinking out the hose. That's a great use of metaphor here