the world wasn’t always a click away

it wasn’t always walking billboards

chatting or selling you your most inner

thoughts, some things we held close

and when we didn’t like some one or another

we felt the fog of their shoulders

we had to endure our own cruelty

face to face, we studied the law

of consequences. it wasn’t always this way

scrolling friendships and Uber’d kisses

beauty is sitting side by side without words

or devices, together attending to the mouth

of now. we cherish the lesson of not knowing

better, assuming the worse could never be

worse.