Photos from When We Were Young - Nana Grizol

I was looking at photos from when we were young

Your hair is light blue and you’re smiling in one

And it’s a strange remembrance brought on by this semblance

Oh we were so serious, shy, inexperienced

Oh so unsure of ourselves

Making mistakes without anyone’s help

And I thought of the ways I remember you well

Some sweet recollection of redwoods and raspberry vines

Boys you wrote postcards to numerous times

The uncertainty then

Like some sentence of sin

Punctuated by moments of tenderness

When there were long conversations, sharing of beds

Walks home from swimming pools

Giddy, impressionable, the distance grew up like the night

Decisions were silence or preemptive flight

Yeah the queer kids I knew, we did tend to be shy

And your parents just couldn’t get over their shit

They spoke of how all their ambitions were split

But they still let you in and tried to pretend

Now you let them refer to your lovers as friends

And I wish they could see how it hurts

Or affirm your existence with interested words

Yeah their self-obsession's a patriarch’s curse

So you made a family from people you found

Your grew into yourself with those weirdos around

Late nights talking at home, or dancing 'til dawn

Or driving all day, 'cause you’re sick of the phone

Yeah, the good ones they tend to leave town

It helps to write letters and say «come on down»

Yeah I’m so much better when you’re around

And I think of you when I put on your old clothes

We don’t talk all that often, who ever does?

But I’ll visit you soon and sing you a tune

About finding a family somewhere in the ruins

Of the expectations we once knew

We’ll try to make peace with our patriarchs too