It was a very cold winter that year and we had no heat.

Really I was more distracted by the    
near death experience of our car flipping over    
a flurrying highway in Wheeling, West VA just after he'd    
hit the bowl a few times    
at dawn    
and how now    
my mother's car was totaled,    
she was furious,    
there were bills waiting for me at home and I knew    
this meant facing a cold and snowy winter    
of now even earlier mornings    
walking to the bus stops and waiting freezing    
then walking more    
and trying    
to make connections    
and how    
   
after the accident he'd gotten a bus    
going in the opposite direction of    
home with me    
chasing a quick runaway    
vacation mess of drugs    
and who knows what else as always    
leaving me alone with questions unasked and unanswered.    
I'd barely even noticed- Valentines Day,    
has always been shitty for me    
that year made more so suddenly    
   
while stranded, a blizzard    
at my parents old house    
his mother rubbing salt    
into my wounds for the purpose of    
igniting me, like herself, with fury    
"and he's left you alone on Valentine's Day..."    
it worked to the extent that i then realized he'd yes    
left me alone on Valentine's Day and damn him for that for sure    
but still it didn't bring him home    
like she'd wanted me to use it for.    
   
"did he even send you flowers?" she bellowed.    
Of course not, he was broke.    
All ect's were in place in my mind    
distraught more so silently by    
all the other nights    
at home    
he left me alone    
on a regular basis,    
the ones that weren't masked by a traveling bug,    
the one's that his mother would never know of    
because I shared nothing    
with anyone.    
   
He was my best, and in some ways only, friend.    
I did not interfere    
with his    
vision.    
I did not interfere    
with him    
living his life    
like a shooting star.    
   
It was not youthful naivety though I was half that    
nor was it foolish stubbornness which was the rest of me    
that made me    
so passive about our choices.    
     
I just knew him    
too well    
 
(still do)    
   
and I just  
loved him    
too well    
 
(still do)    
   
to not just    
let him    
   
be.    
   
His chaos, denial, selfishness and irresponsibility    
worn so proud like a self-stitched badge upon his sleeve,    
shown so loud for all to see and so fucking ready    
to fight    
for it      
while mine lay hidden under layers upon layers of insecurity and worry, introverted self-loathing and incessant over-working that barely paid my way    
anyway.    
   
I was in hiding back then,  
much more than now.    
   
I lived buried deep.    
And yes, to my horror there was a fearful guilty anxiety of pain    
that someday    
time would pierce me with it's levity    
and that I too    
would run away    
   
but that when I did    
it would not be like his quickly bursting temporary flings with   fun, wild memories and an already fading freedom like all stars,    
it would be an eternal burning wound inside my heart,    
it would be    
for    
   
ever.