You seemed to grow old suddenly

While I was still mid-game or

Mid-sentence, even

And then you were not so much you

As some stranger

I happened to share the house with

And I think that's when we stopped

Pretending we were close

Because you were practically fossilised

In your new school

And I was little more than a foetus

Waiting to grow out of mine

And some days you swigged lemonade in town

With the magnitude of your eleven years

Weighing on me like

The sky had become too heavy for its shoulders

I would throw your old paper aeroplanes

Down the bend in the stairwell

And wonder why there was no longer

A little boy to throw them back up

Like every game was a test

For physics

And for me