For Stephen

A Freeverse Elegy

They’ll say we were just boys
but they never saw us—
kings of the midnight curfew,
co-conspirators of every stolen hour.
We weren’t just up late;
we were lighting bonfires in open fields,
blasting music through busted the speakers in your jeep,
racing the sunrise and the ticking clock
that said “get home before your dad finds out.”

You were my favorite kind of chaos—
all teeth and laugh and flash of wild joy.
You didn’t enter a room;
you detonated it,
left everyone grinning,
wondering what the hell just happened
and how to get closer to it.

Senior year,
you moved in with me,
but really, you moved into me—
a second shadow,
a mirror with a crooked smile.
My parents fed you,
but we fed each other—
on dares, inside jokes,
and the kind of dumb-ass courage
you only get when you think
you’re invincible.

We were invincible.

We discovered music like it was a religion,
girls like they were galaxies,
and dangerous situations
like they were side quests—
always in over our heads,
but somehow always getting out.

Who else would leap fences at midnight
just to scream into the moon,
then sprint back breathless,
laughing like it owed us something?

You were my brother,
and it’s a hell of a thing,
to say goodbye outloud.
And now they’ve taken you.

What chapter is this, Stephen?
The one where the hero disappears?
The one where the sidekick
keeps the flame in his head
while the world spins on
without asking?

I feel you still—
not in the tragic way they mean,
not some soft whisper of grief.

No.
You’re loud in me.
Still laughing.
Still reckless.
Still encouraging
Still calling bullshit
on the way I try to carry you
too carefully.

They don’t know
how many nights we rewrote the rules.
They don’t know
how we struck matches
just to see how close we could hold them.
They don’t know
how you drummed on the world with both fists
and dared it to keep up.

They don’t know
how much of me was made
in the echo of your riot.

I do.

And until the next life,
until the sky splits and we’re both warriors again—
bandanas on, mischief in our veins—
I’ll keep beating this drum for you.
I’ll raise the ruckus.
I’ll break the curfew.
Because the world is quieter now.
But I am not.