Good Friend

After years,
I drag the yellowed books
off the shelf—
they sit across from me,
like an old rival,
like a mirror.
 
I tell myself: let’s begin again,
throw away the wisdoms gathered,
they were only dust.
Begin where error breathes.
 
I write:
How are your ideals these days?
Have they aged well,
or do they sell themselves
to the brokers of stability?
You made a home with me,
though the rumors say otherwise—
your name drifts like gossip
in the marketplace of half-truths.
 
The world spins,
everyone invents their own version.
Me too—
sinking sky to underworld,
piled with chores,
head stuffed with mistakes
like rotten fruit.
 
Still,
I hunger only for
two moments of intimacy,
the primitive love
of a clean heart.
Most of life is coal—
hard, black, burning.
My meaning?
I make sense of you
by unmaking myself,
finding your greatness
in the fractures.
 
This solitary road—
its stones endless,
its griefs fossil-heavy—
yet I trust you’ve never
turned cruel.
 
Your words arrive again,
between gaps of silence,
like trickster seeds
on a barren field.
They whisper:
live again,
don’t let the mind rot old.
 
Tell me, scholar—
or lover-in-hiding—
did you ever quench
your thirst with a woman’s touch?
Or was the text your mistress,
the book your embrace?
 
This world—
a theatre of deception,
the syllabus, a masquerade.
My debts to truth remain unpaid.
 
So I ask you—
wearing whatever masks you choose—
are you well, my good friend?
Stay with the real,
for I still hope,
though I no longer believe.
 
Me? I fight—
rope tight, jaw locked.
Life leaks,
dreams peel away.
Still I brace my chest,
walk alone,
like you once did.
 
Good friends are rare,
rarer than clarity.
Inside me gathers
a stone-heavy ache.
 
One day, when we meet,
I’ll tell you all of it—
without disguise,
without irony—
like a confession
the world won’t hear.