The moment our souls first connected,
I could feel the stars shattering
because I was too young to have found my soul sisters,
scattered among the streets of this tedious town.

Forests vanished beneath the tip of my pen when I wrote about you,
all of you, and the memories we made
that year of incandescence.
Lost in the laughter that kept us alive,
battling to breathe in the hallway seas,
falling in love over and over
in the way only a friendship allows,
I found my happy place in the cadence of our conversations.

Now, we’re cursed by too little time
and copious expectations,
held captive by the weight of growing up and out of bliss.
Deprived of shared adventures and a cageless utopia,
the enchantment of our midnight chats
has faded into radio silence.

The stars that had trembled as we walked by
now scoff at our tired eyes and hunched backs,
signs of both the abandoned and of those who have left.
No fire, they say, can burn eternally
and even stars die out.