motifs

The Friendship Series
Installment 4: Ben and Katie


I open up your rare, eclectic newsletter
and smile knowingly at a few of the photos.
I think I almost understand
the poem scribbled at the bottom.

I do not really know you,
but I know someone better than most
who knows you better than the heavenly host
and tells me everything.
And I think that must count
for something.

My best friend's core creed
is "to know and be known,"
even when the knowing
mostly happens over the phone.

In your endless "situation,"
certain items are motifs-
things like sunflowers and graveyards
and terrible timing.

In high school, I had a friend
with this obsessive need to be different.
We didn't talk that much in school,
but loads online, where it was safe to be real.
He grew up as a missionary kid in Turkey
where everything about him equaled anomaly.

Imagine the shock
when his family moved back to the States,
and suddenly he was just like everyone else.
Upon realizing he wasn't inherently extraordinary,
he dedicated himself to all kinds of obscurity,
distinguishing himself by his "eclecticity."

I don't think you have that same kind of need,
but I'm not sure what to make out of all your motifs.

Anyways, those are just the musings
of a mutual friend,
not the Someone
dedicated to total omniscience.

To Her, there's no such thing as
"more-than-a-friend."
How could there be,
when a friend's the highest good?

To sail away
on a great ship of motifs
and to take on the world
is the dream of a Peach.