You had your blue days,
Confused days when you
Didn’t know one week
From another, or the flames

Of your remaining brothers.
I understood the emptiness
You felt in your liver.
It’s the same for all abused.

We say we don’t want to,
But then we have to,
And then we do.
We should have told you

Instead of just practicing
In front of mirrors
To ourselves. Hopeless
Thought loop, new shoes,

Temazepam in blue foil.
An age of recoiling
Into my self; Time is a
Double-headed snake.

This day is the same day
As twenty blue years ago
When I first parked
In a lay-by to avoid going home.

Do you remember mix-tapes
Where we wrote down love songs?
I drove over the bridge
Into the harmful arms of the past.