#1 precisely cut

A:
To begin with. . . I never really had a place here.
No matter how much I try,
how hard I give,
none of it matters.

It’s as if I’m a stranger in every language spoken,
a visitor in every room I enter.
I don’t belong.
Not here.
Not anywhere.

B:
That’s your problem?
Mine is far crueler.

The whole world denies me.
They reject my very breath.
It’s not that I don’t belong—
it’s that I do,
and the world refuses to admit it.

They hate me for existing,
for standing where they can see me.
I am what they avert their eyes from.

A:
Then we’re the same, you and I.
Two peas in the same cracked pod.

B:
No.
No, no, no. . . you misunderstand.

This world has been cruel to me my entire life.
But you— you’re only passing through.
A traveler, lost in a land not your own.

You don’t belong because you’ve yet to find that one place,
that one heart
that says, “You do.”

Me…
I once had that.
A home.
A voice that said, “Welcome back.”

Now, they’re gone—
no longer part of this world.

And no matter how far I wander,
no matter how many doors I knock upon,
they all close.
They all shun me.
They all whisper, monster.

I wish—
oh, how I wish there was somewhere,
someone,
I could truly belong to again.

A:
Then let me be that somewhere.
You and I— we can be brothers.
Or at least. . . friends.

That way—

B:
Friends?
Kid, even saying that word near me
would make the world cast you aside.
You’d be hated just for standing close.

A:
Who cares?
Didn’t you hear me?
I don’t belong anywhere else.

If the world won’t have me,
then let me belong beside you.

B:
You’re a fool.
A reckless, kind fool.
To reach out to a soul
so twisted,
so broken,
so denied.

A:
Maybe.
But broken souls still need to be held,
don’t they?

So. . .
can we be friends?

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