holding hands

hey.
waiting, praying for brother's brakelights?
and sort of watching your hands
work against you,
picking out green
from divets in his car seat.
not to mention the carpet.
how much fuzz have you smoked, you think?
and how much of it was Your Highness -
you were mostly dizzy on butane,
my dear, you know,
making piles out of those paper days.
you could do nothing but roll them up and
smoke.
smoke, smoke, smoke.
oh, thinking back to you,
hello,
my first, my unending love.

Don't you know
I was here for you, even then.
you were always on your way home
to today.
And now we both keep
this journey awake,
seek out the next
lesson in the trees,
the sidewalk veins,
the occasional trip,
the graffiti,
the people.

I take my sophomore self
who still sits in my chest
and tell them everything in a hug.
They would understand me.
Neither of us was ever really worried.
But it would have been nice to receive my own love,
my own steadfast sunshine
from outside -
to get some of this posture
into my high school hunch.
Just to comfort that spine.

We regret none of it.
hell, we can make a pipe out of a banana.
red potatoes and kiwis.
mad fucking skills, though this isn't
where our pride is built.
that was just a lean-to, a flint-struck fire
in the wild wild frustration.
We know we can survive
if we're stranded again.
We'll build a better home.
oh, and we know -

we know we are nowhere near the end.
But we do not forget each other -

I can't forget
a held hand.