literature

I have one friend I love

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cowcreamer's avatar
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Literature Text

I have one friend I love
from great distances, the coolly
negotiated spaces of email, instant messaging;
we forget the past so easily
when we are words.

But when we are faces, or
voices on a phone, we become teenagers again,
hating on reflex.

I love one friend in a room,
a dorm room and then later the rooms
of our apartment, which we were always going to decorate
but never did;

our was an endless, free-form conversation
that settled into the spaces
between classes,
library visits, late-night ice cream runs;

but cannot seem to exist in the space
between her room and mine; her city and mine.

I love one friend only once every few weeks,
when I have energy to resist
her tidal despair,
and its creeping undertow.
I love one friend in high school
when I needed her; when I had no one else –
But I cannot seem
to love her now.

I love my friends if only I could arrange them,
displace them, in space
and in time; where I want them
and where I need them.

There is no utopia
where my friends and I all gather
together at a picnic bench in a public park to
talk and laugh and reminisce;

we do not love that easily.
-
© 2013 - 2024 cowcreamer
Comments1
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xxBoneless's avatar
Strange how familiar this is to me. Very good, I love it. :)