boys

It has little to do with them, the love of two boys. It has everything to do with the world and the places they want to go. When they met in a factory, strapped on their backs to different distribution lines, intersecting sometimes, leaving sometimes, they would gossip. The prettier one would critique the floor manager's ethics. The angry one would write poetry about the nauseating endless movement of their own production.

The prettier one left first, bought by the first freedom he found, armed with his own ethics. He called the angry one sometimes, still stalling in the circles of his own hell, to verify old notes. But the notes were scribbled all over in red ink and the anger, pain, and resentment in the voice on the other end of the receiver, like a wall of noise choking the words. But how does love leave when understanding can't?

The angry one then learnt the worst art- picking himself up. He turned hell into empire, building cults for loveless devils wherever he went. He threw clothes, smoke, and pretty words over the blood he drew. He set out to avenge God's abandonment because he could never blame a pretty boy's happiness. But was he happy? "Without me?" Was happiness not just a trick of memory? He checked the notes again but the red had bled everywhere.

As the pretty one found time, free, he began unraveling his days in the old factory and wondered where he would have gone if not for the destinies we were strapped into. He wondered if he would have left alone. It was time to build a life, and the raw materials were in place. Where was the drive? What was God upto? Who would know better than his little Satan?

They met in the mountains. The pretty one dressed up as a traveller, and the angry one as a witch. Traveller begging for home, witch trying to hold him down. "My arms are home!" And on and on they went, in circles, talking about everything but themselves, the everything in themselves. The witch leaned in, a challenge, "Kiss me"

"No"

"Why?"

"Because you're just trying to break a boundary"

Huh. Just?

A year later, in the heart of the world's smoke, they lie again, and he admits to wanting it too. And everything burns, inside and outside. The stars know jackshit of what boys can do. I'm uninstalling costar again. There's a universe under his skin. Mirror after mirror after mirror, we are the same, and different, and same, and always changing. Who we are is what we make of this afternoon.