Boy Next-Door

We did live on a long street street in small houses each the same fronted with lawns green and square and sidewalks of cold hard concrete all young families just starting out moms and dads and children each all brought together by circumstance friendships to form and grow sweet young girls and boys to run and play some of each of every age to form friendships of shared likes and common bonds that might be and he was years older than me tall and gangly across the street and my friend he was not but every day I did see him we did grow both older and tall and with our friends we all did play young and old had different games and together we did not play from childhood changed into our teens and as we grew we both did dream of all the things that we might do and of all the things we might be till the day the country did call and the day that he went away to a land most far away and never again did we meet and at home I watch the news of the war so far away and I did not really understand of where he went and what he did somehow empty I did feel somehow had lost a part of me a piece of youth not to be reclaimed a empty longing left inside in our hometown now stands a wall and many names it does contain and one of them is for him and see you in it I do cry I do not truly understand for we were never truly friends and together we never did play he just lived across the street