inkskinned:

out in the back of the church we told each other we’d grow up and keep being odd with our fingertips stained and our knees all bruised and you took a deep breath and told me that you can’t teach a fish to climb a tree and if someone tried to make you survive through a lifetime of cubicles you’d explode like a firework and i laughed and said okay what color firework 

i figured you’d say something sarcastic and strange like chartreuse or evergreen or wintermint

but you looked at me with those eyes that meant you had glimpsed something of your future and sort of hated it and you said “you know the color you feel when someone you love slowly forgets you”

and i swallowed hard and said yes, yes i had lived through a couple of those

you looked at the sky then. “i’d be one of those,” you said, “a whole sunset of them.”