summer camp

The Friendship Series
Installment 5: (I don't remember her name)


Once a girl told me my name couldn't possibly be Sarah
because I wasn't blonde.
Do princesses only come in one color?
I asked myself and frowned.

Meeting your expectations
was like trying to spread cold butter on a piece of toast.
I later found crumbs of myself
all over the floor from the attempt.

In reality I've found it's difficult
to cut yourself with a butter knife.
I've since disassembled a lot of razors,
but that's beside the point.

When I worked retail in an amusement park,
some customers remarked ironically
"You're the happiest employee we've seen all day"
while I was thinking of ways to die.

Since birth it seems,
people have constantly told me just how happy I am,
commenting on my "contagious" smile
til I considered it a germ.

At summer camp, that girl who said
my parent's named me wrong
asked me how I was so happy all the time-
I probably grinned and shrugged.

She didn't see the tears
that had been streaming down my face
the whole time we'd been talking,
and that's probably what hurt the most.

I don't fault her though-
it was midnight when we walked back to the cabin.
For all she knew, I could have been blonde
in that early lack of lighting-

Could have actually deserved my name,
if someone would just stop to listen!
I might let him see me in the sun-
leave the butter out to soften.

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.

the other side of the world

The Friendship Series
Installment 3: Courtney


Your house was different from mine.
There was more fighting,
but the casual kind-
the consequence of seven girls
vying for space,
to find themselves unique
in a crowded place.

The kind of fighting
that comes from closeness
was one I didn't know yet,
and even though it alarmed me,
I enjoyed it.

You were blonde with sharp blue eyes,
darker than mine, the cautious kind-
stained by grief
or something else divine.

I wouldn't be surprised to see you
in some subculture in heaven.
Before you went to Korea,
I swear you were already Korean.

Your piano-hands were angrier than mine,
pressing on the keys
like they were mines.
And if you dug down deep,
you'd find the gold
that'd buy you your escape
from the past's grip hold.

Is that what you found
on the other side of the world?

the three musketeers

The Friendship Series
Installment 2: Hannah and Jack


Paddling down Main Street in a canoe,

how far do you have to go before I forget you?

How many pancakes will it take

to cover the doghouse, to quiet the ache?

The answer is never logical-

something about how ice cream has no bones.

You paddled your way down to Georgia,

and I never forgot the joke.

I hope you still play the french horn,

and have all the ribbons we won

from counting long hours of practicing-

a different color for each crucial sum.

The ribbons on my flute case

were purple, yellow, and lacy green.

The purple was frayed at the edges

that I played with and stroked pridefully.

Before you moved to Georgia,

the summer after the sixth grade,

the three of us: you, me, and the Boy,

were three musketeers on parade.

A tree stump served as our secret computer,

as we searched for the lady in red:

the master thief Carmen San Diego-

oh, the fantastical adventures we had!

My parents asked why I didn't have more friends.

Why not Maggie, or Kristen, or Kate?

But I liked the little world we had,

and didn't fit in with those girls anyway.

When you left, the Boy and I

grew at the same time closer and farther apart.

It was common knowledge he loved me,

though he'd never spoken it.

He was like an old piece of furniture

that pleasantly haunts a room,

the kind you like because it's always been there,

but that's easy to overlook.

When I made friends with misfit, lip-gloss girls,
I missed your chicken laugh.
But most of all I missed the three of us
when friendship was all that we had.

my first best friend

The Friendship Series
Installment 1: Lizzie


My first best friend
had brown boricua skin
and wide black eyes.
She taught me many things,
like how to do makeup
and tell lies.
She showed me how
to press heat to my wavy hair
and make it obey.
She touched me hungrily,
like she was begging me
to stay.

My first best friend
told me to join the soccer team
so I’d lose weight.
I did all that and more,
listening to her
call herself ugly and fat.
She was skinnier than I was,
prettier too,
and deeply defiant.
According to our moms,
I was supposed to be
"the good influence."

When she showed up at school
with cuts on her arms,
I didn't know what to do.
Later on that week,
I offered it up in prayer
in my small group.
The leader told my youth pastor,
who gave me a week to tell her mom,
or else he would.
I felt so trapped,
forced to break
my best friend's trust.

He told me
if something happened to her,
I'd always blame myself,
if I knew what she was doing
and never got her any help.
I don't know if it really helped
when her parents unhinged
her bedroom door.
But how could I know anything?
I wasn't even ten and four.

Later on,
when I started to self-harm,
I didn't dare tell anyone,
except for kids who also did,
and I knew more than one.
Six years later,
when I finally told my mom,
she said she knew,
then repeated the tired adage:
"if your friends jumped off a cliff,
would you?"

My first best friend
jumped off a cliff of sorts
our junior year.
She ran away from home,
and my parents didn't want me
to see her.
They said it might be dangerous-
she was doubtless doing drugs.
At home it was the cause
of many teary arguments.

I started off my senior year
without a friend in sight.
I cried alone in my room
or in the shower
a lot of nights.
We don't talk anymore,
but on Facebook I scroll
through pictures of her son.
She was a fiercely loyal friend,
and I know now
she's a good mom.