I attended your wedding reception
yesterday. I met everyone,
John, Savitha, Arjun and Sam,
the old group, all grown up,
their lives having taken different
trajectories from my own.
I sat in silence, thinking about
yesteryear when we got drunk,
listened to good prog-metal
bands like Symphony X,
Evergrey and King Crimson,
shot the shit, played Saints Row 3,
thinking the graphics were great.
Both video games and you have come
a long way, success defining
every step you take, while I
cling to a string of nostalgia.
I’m not bitter, just swallowed by
the echoes of another time
when nothing mattered,
when we didn’t care about where
we stood, and we sat in that room
upstairs and watched Boardwalk Empire
or Treme, or something else HBO
produced, which is a far cry
from the woke stuff that’s everywhere
today. We used pen drives to store
music, and caught the World Cup Final
on Television. You upset that
Iniesta scored the winning goal,
and I, jubilant. Time has turned all
that grey, and I guess my silence
spoke more than words ever could
as I watched Arjun strut about in a
three-piece suit,
Savitha intimately chatting with John
and the pastor encouraging everyone
with a sermon on the sanctity of
marriage that went over my head.
Ordinary Person 
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