We used to play MX Unleashed on my PS2

sitting on the floor in my living room

on rainy days, mostly, when we couldn’t

mimic the dirt bikes in the game

with the bicycle your mom bought

and the bicycle my mom thrifted.

Money was tight so we had to

move away,

and I don’t think I’ve seen you since

that last day we played my PS2.

But I didn’t know it would be the last day

because we swore that

despite different schools and different friends,

despite different homework and different

classes,

despite a hundred miles or so between us

we would be best friends for life.

Who knew life

only had a 20-mile radius.

Who knew that

I wouldn’t play my PS2 until

years later

with my new best friend,

the one that would stick around for life,

but faded into a

fabricated 20-mile radius

through a cell phone screen,

meant to shorten the 200-mile distance

between our actual lives.

Who knew that

one day would be the last day

I ever played MX Unleashed,

and I would pack it away with my PS2

into little boxes

to store them away with old

photographs and scratched CDs,

yellowing pillows and torn blankets

with frayed edges and a million holes.

Who knew that

one day we would grow up

despite our insistence that we would

be young and stupid

forever,

despite the fact

that we never got what we wanted

and all we wanted back then

was to grow up,

despite the new video games I bought

all these years later

for the new console I watch

collect dust on a shelf,

just like the memories

it couldn’t quite recapture.

But now I look back on those old memories

preserved through the lens of an

ancient Polaroid,

and I think how desperate I am

to become a kid again

just to experience the thrill of

missing the bus and

spreading gossip at the lunch table,

just to experience life in the dark

on a humid, rainy day

sitting on the floor of my living room

in front of an enormous box TV,

controller in hand, conversing about

roller coasters and video games,

homework and the dirt bikes

we couldn’t ride—

and I wonder

when did I stop playing

MX Unleashed?