The first time I heard of Hunter S Thompson was the year I turned 19
He was an advertising guy I met through work
High rolling with the edge that comes from having your ideals ground away to nothing
On the brink of a second marriage he clung to me, a girl precisely half his age
With fresh libertine ideals, an open heart and youthful beauty
I must have seemed like the perfect excuse to ruin his engagement
We had been out that night, drinking till we stumbled
Sobering up on lines of overpriced cocaine heavily cut with MDMA
Useful in disguising the quality of what passed at our end of the world
By the time we made it back to his apartment we had reached some sort of equilibrium
We sat in his window seat watching the city, battering tides of weather lashed the building
The passage he chose was so appropriate it can't have been deliberate
Looking at him, I could almost see the high water mark
That place where his wave had broken and rolled back
