I remember your name, Milo Vilago. I think of you now, how your eyes gleamed with potent. Can you hear me, telling this story at heart of your hometown, confining you into a perfect contrast of this obsolete place we call home?

This place I call home has one freeway going through and splitting the land in two. On one half, you take my hand after school and our sneakers saturate with melting snow. On the other, your face is stung red; not by the everlasting cold but by the warmth of your mother’s plagued hand. What nuance can be enclosed by a highway? I still remember, Milo, the day you left and lost sight of every ungrown part of you.

Part of you is buried underneath your grandmother’s bed of uninhabited soil. You renounced everyone when you endeavored across the country; even yourself. The top of your graduating class– the top of your entire school even as a junior. Does the smart boy in you truly forget all that it once had?

They once had a scholarship picked ripe just for you, a golden ticket to your future. I envied you with the same ardent of which I yearned for your grasp; guiding me through the streets of New York City where the snow was shoveled off of the sidewalk. Every letter I address to you is an unsaid goodbye, an arm squeeze within every hug, that settled every doubt. Every blossom I draw resolves you.

In response to, “Captivity (First Man on the Moon),” by Sherman Alexie (1993).