Photos from When We Were Young

I was looking at photos from when we were young
 Your hair is light blue and you're smiling in one
 And it's a strange remembrance brought on by this semblance
 Oh, we were so serious, shy, inexperienced
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 Oh-so unsure of ourselves
 Making mistakes without anyone's help
 And I thought of the ways I remember you well
 Some sweet recollection of redwoods and raspberry vines
 Boys you wrote postcards to numerous times
 The uncertainty then, like some sentence of sin
 Punctuated by moments of tenderness
 When there were long conversations, sharing of beds
 Walks home from swimming pools
 Giddy, impressionable, the distance grew up like the night
 Decisions were silence or preemptive flight
 Yeah, the queer kids I knew, we did tend to be shy
 And your parents just couldn't get over their shit
 They spoke of how all their ambitions were split
 But they still let you in and tried to pretend
 Now you let them refer to your lovers as friends
 And I wish they could see how it hurts
 Or affirm your existence with interested words
 Yeah, their self-obsession's a patriarch's curse
 So you made a family from people you found
 You grew into yourself with those weirdos around
 Late nights talking at home, or dancing 'til dawn
 Or driving all day, 'cause you're sick of the phone
 Yeah, the good ones they tend to leave town
 It helps to write letters and say, "Come on down"
 Yeah, I'm so much better when you're around
 And I think of you when I put on your old clothes
 We don't talk all that often, who ever does?
 But I'll visit you soon and sing you a tune
 About finding a family somewhere in the ruins
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 Of the expectations we once knew
 We'll try to make peace with our patriarchs, too