Title: If you and I were heroes

Type: Poem

Genre: Romance, Light angst

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We were seventeen.

When you promised me that this tiny dustbowl of a southern town was not going to be everything my life was made of.

It wasn't hard to believe because the maps you'd spread across your ceiling never lied since you claimed it was easier to dream when they were stuck above you in the night.

I remember the lines you'd drawn, in a felt pen, red because it seemed important, seemed louder than the rest.

And I remember how you would trace the roads with your eyes until you fell asleep.

You had a knack for memorizing every escape route, and when I asked why, you answered that it was because one day you would have to run.

When I asked if I could fly away with you, you said yes, and that night I dreamed of runaways with you and falling stars.

I never was sure if they were supposed to mean something bigger than us.

. . .

Sometimes when I lie awake at night, I wonder now how far we might have gotten if we ever left, if we had jumped into your old impala and left the road behind us.

It's too bad we never could fix it up all the way, and that all the stains on our clothes were left behind as shadows of what might have been, someday.

It might have been utopia, allowing our reckless souls to find a way to fly free f