Afghanistan

I'm not going to miss you.

My chest doesn't tighten when I think about you.

My breath stays even.

This time, there was no lump in my throat

when you told me you were leaving.

I’m not going to miss you,

but you shouldn’t go.

Even if I never see you again,

you belong in O’Fallon.

Like snow on Christmas or shoes on feet you belong

in the heat of your mom's apartment in the summer,

in the tangled sheets of the mattress on your dad's basement floor,

in the front seat of your piece of shit white Honda

with the windows down and your feet kicked up on the dash,

singing along to Underoath. You belong

in the St. Louis Guitar Center,

wearing your gray beanie, too-tight jeans,

and an expression caught somewhere between arrogance and boredom.

You belong on Joey's deck at night, pulling on a cigarette

and nursing a beer while the porch light

dances off your pale blue eyes, warming them. You

belong on the soccer fields off highway K

bouncing a ball between your feet,

in my garage taking too long to say goodbye,

in Austin's basement, picking at the strings of your Gibson

the way you picked me apart.

Your studded belt, v-neck tees, and tattoos won't make sense out there.

Your bitter sarcasm won't sound right, bouncing off sand and rock

instead of concrete driveways

and somehow the driveways won't feel right either:

they'll be a little too smooth, a little too cold,

So you have to stay.

Because if you leave, it all changes.

There's this idea that things from our past are static, but it's wrong.

The day I left, I took a snapshot of what I was leaving

and imagined it would remain unchanged.

I wanted every visit to be a time machine that would take me back to high school

and a world where I knew everything and everyone.

I'm always a little disappointed when the westward drive down 70 doesn't take me back to 2008.

We grew up in O'Fallon: making out in back seats

under not-so-starry skies, making up excuses

for coming home two hours past curfew for the third Friday in a row,

making love,

or what we thought was love but was actually far far from it,

making it out alive when it all went horribly wrong.

That place will always be a part of me, but I'm not a part of it anymore.

There's a new gas station on the corner of Stump,

Adam's dog died,

Josh got married,

SnoBiz closed.

Faces are older, voices deeper, the stories they tell unfamiliar.

You still belong though. You're in the snapshot,

and you're there now.

And even if I never see you again,

if you're still making asshole comments to the guy working at Taco Bell,

if you're still sitting up in bed writing when you can't sleep,

if you're still setting off the fire alarm with burnt bacon on Saturday mornings,

then the picture makes a little more sense

and the exit sign for K off 70 still somehow feels like home.

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