I think everyone has a truth they don’t want to face and this is mine

The first boy I really loved

He was from Oakland and he wanted to be a poet

I met him in college he was a friend of a friend

I was having a panic attack from smoking weed

I was weirdly hooked on it even though it made me feel terrible

Also my best friend was a pothead

And he was her friend

And he grew up very poor in Oakland and his dad was shot in front of him when he was five

And he was so devastatingly brave and he saw me

In a way I’m not sure anyone has ever seen me

And he left because I was too good and his life was too dark and he kind of just wasted away,

I suppose we had our moment because of youth and hope and circumstance

I tried to throw it away and get cynical and say it was idealism or he wasn’t brave enough to stay but the painful truth was that it was a real connection that I haven’t found since

The kind that is not a feeling but a knowing, the kind that is the truth

And I believed it would be impossible to find again

And it just went to sleep inside me

But I wanted to show him I could save him I wanted to prove him wrong

And all kinds of bad things happened to me because I followed him through that darkness he left behind

It’s funny I feel like he’s still with me after all this time

Telling me to follow my heart

Showing me my destiny

I think names are like spells that can wake you from the dead when you say them out loud

His name was jack