I dipped my fingertips inch-deep into a bowl of sugar. Some grains stuck under my fingernails and made me feel like I was holding diamonds. All I needed at the time of rock-bottom was one thing to make me feel like something was worth it.

Back at your house we pretended to get drunk while only sipping on German beer. Laying on the hardwood floor we shout at politics on the television we can't see but hear through the open window. We don't even know if they believe in what we do or drink oil in their Frosted Flakes. Eight servings a day of water but votes for them and campaigns above all. Win them over and then let them fall; just like me and you. Do we hold each other tightly to prevent the fall, or to make it hurt more when we do?

No more protests at the college, only us in your room watching re-runs of 80's cartoons. Television frequencies illuminated our bare limbs and the white ice cream in our bowls. Silver spoons in our hands that were gold in our young minds, old bodies.

Face to face in the dark bed, our backbones erect to our necks, we tell scary stories into each others face, eyes, mouth. Anything to go back to childhood; to start young and grow old together; to live through more together; to avoid the world together. Car payments are on the sly in your parents closet. We have ghosts, aliens, dinosaurs, colorful animated films and auto-responsive robots to call our friends. Let's not grow up so fast.

Piles of paperback books rest in dust like Pompeii remains on your shelves. I rescue them and treasure them like artifacts, unbending the dog-eared pages and erasing the elementary school crushes written inside. Helping all the five-word-sentence books couldn't prepare me for the next task of growing-up. You told me not to avoid it, to embrace it, to embrace you.

The bedsheets changed from Power Rangers to white and us on top instead of underneath with a flash light. Humoring you and agreeing with you, I lost the childness opinion I once had. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I rolled over to the window, the dirty panes letting through a gray colored sun. But my diamonds were still white.