Boundaries

Every time my best friend Dave and I

Ran away from home as kids

He always marked the same spot

As making our escape official

Everything scared us back then

Especially the people who raised us

His old man beating him for backtalk

When it was the bottle in his old man’s pocket

That did all the talking

Me, I was always pissing off somebody

In my house, my boy-crazy uncle

Once chased me around my house with a hammer

Though we both knew it wasn’t the hammer

He intended to hit me with if I got caught.

Dave always stopped at the end of our street

And said, ‘this is it, this makes it official,”

And I always believed him, more scared of what

Lay ahead after that, than the beatings or the abuse

Back at our houses,

Even though we had run away so often

As to know every inch of that terrain.

We always expected something horrible to happen

Because we violated some sacred trust

To be beaten or raped, to love the people who did it

Dave and I always bickered most at these times

About which way to go, and which one of us

Wanted to turn back, and why,

With me or he calling him or me a coward

He even said I wasn’t being his friend any more

Because I was scared and said stupid things,

Both of us knowing that we loved each other

To ever stop being friends,

Even all these years later when we both managed

To get away – finally.