on august 16th of 2015 i wrote “cherish kyle souza” in my journal and as hard as it is to believe, i can still find that feeling in a pot of memories that boiled to the top and evaporated into a home that had dried out. a home i poured my whole soul into but clogged on the abundance and 7 years later i find myself walking past 31 diamond st in a brooklyn snow flurry after a few gin martinis, thinking about the time your friend tommy taught me how to enjoy them, about the time we sat at the bar on the corner and decided this apartment was the answer to our emptiness. and somehow i feel a gratitude i didn’t feel when i left, when my friends carried 5 years of history down 5 flights of stairs and your only response was “i want the keys back”. grateful for all you taught me, the mirror you stood in front of me. all the insults we let burn holes in one another like a lit cigarette being thrown into the street. we always said the end would be petty because we felt too much for each other to let it feel like nothing, too much misery to not bring company to witness.

you used to deem this our neighborhood; a place we washed our dirties and claimed our relationship clean. a place we thought we could find the love we were lacking but in the end only highlighted the space in between.

-tbrumm