An old friendship
(school years are like dog years)
You gave me a transfusion of music
Donating good taste across
A dozen tape cassettes
In a single first-year term.

I moved, we maintained.
Summers here and there,
Hanging out,
Books, short stories,
Musical remixes,
Endless talk about girls.
The typical teenage stuff.

I thought
We'd share our stories
Forever.

A sudden silence.
A sudden distance.
No explanation.
Decades of mystery,
A sense that I betrayed...
Something.

Still rejected, even today.
Attempts to reconnect
Rebuffed.

I'll never know
(unless I ask)
I'll never ask.