The first time I met him I was riding a city bus

down to the piers to see the tall ships and the

Norwegian submarine that had docked for the 

maritime fair. The bus stopped and he got on

and flopped into the seat next to me. He smiled

and pointed at me and said, I like your shirt, and

I looked down, because I couldn't remember what was

special about it. Green Lantern. Thanks, I said smiling back,

and he pulled up his own shirt and tugged down the

waistband of his pants, showing that he was wearing

Green Lantern boxer shorts. He laughed, pulling his 

shirt back down. We were both twelve, both guileless.

The ride was long, with many stops, and we talked

the whole way, as though we had known each other

forever, because sometimes it is easy for boys to do that

when they are young, mostly about comic books, but

also about what music we liked, what we liked to do.

He was the first boy my age I had met who liked to write, 

like I did. He even reached into his back pocket

and took out a small, passport-style notebook and let me

look through some of the things he had jotted down.

Toward the back he had drawn, very well, a topless

Asian girl with beautiful breasts fondling an extremely

phallic-looking and massive banana; there was a thought bubble

above her head that said "I love banana cream!!!!!!!"

He laughed nervously and took it back, saying sorry, and

blushing, I forgot that was in there. It's good, I said, 

you're a good artist. He hadn't been planning to go to the

maritime fair, but when my stop came, he got off with me and

we spent the day on the tall ships and the submarine,

and even played, for a few moments, pirates, like we

were little boys. We rode the bus home, we passed the place

where he had gotten on and kept going. At my stop, he got off

again, at we stood at the bus stop like the ending of a first date,

both awkward, both hoping the other wants to hang out again,

both lonely boys too afraid the other can see the desperation in 

each others' eyes, the possibilities. He reached into his pocket

and thrust a crumpled piece of paper at me, said bye quickly

and turned and jogged off. I opened the paper; it was his name

and phone number. The next day I called him, and we grew up

slowly after that, writing together, hiking in the mountains,

swimming, inventing games, but most often just talking

and dreaming up stories together. We went to different schools,

but saw each other every day, we met girls and went on

double dates, we got our drivers licenses on the same day

and drove each other around the town, we slept with the same

girl and it brought us closer and further than we had ever been.

I went to California (partially because), he stayed here and died of leukemia.

Once, for my birthday, he made me a Green Lantern ring

out of a plastic bottle top and it looked like the real thing.

In his hospital room I sat at his bedside and tried to put it on

but I was eighteen now and the ring was made for a boy's fingers.

I reminded him that one of the ring's powers was to grant its wearer

the ability to time travel, and he smiled and turned onto his side,

and said, the tall ships, and we sailed, in my mind, 

over the edge of the map. 

But God is a girl

who finds frustration is being deemed so

the Virgin Mary, pristine and beautiful,

the one that keeps my head down

when I want to scream to Heaven

and she prays with me, this version of Joshua,

and baptizes me in her tears

when I tell her all the wrathful things I think about doing

to myself. She is Gabriel,

quick tongued and hilariously realistic

with her thoughts-- that independence:

she's Lucifer, a thrill seeker, craving something new

from this small town we call Purgatory,

slipping down, down, down,

I'm Virgil, she's Dante,

and we'll burn together,

going out with a bang

©SelfTitled, 2017