Ex-Friends

Breaking up with friends is harder than ending relationships.

Bulleted Thoughts About Friendship

If we are friends, this is for you.

Mundane Intimacy

Between the lines on a grocery list, nestled somewhere after Lysol but before arugula, is all the tiny ways you live your life.   Your idiosyncrasies from how you clean the …

Loser befriends the cool kids

I thought I was done with the cool kids until I realized they were my friends.

Losing Touch

To You–

I use “you” as a pronoun for more than one person though each is special.  Each of my yous makes my heart beat in another key.  Some keys aren’t as common now.  Some haven’t played in years.  For those yous, the ones I’ve lost touch with,  this is my love letter to you.  This is how I remind you that even in the silence, I am rooting for you.  The void between us is filled with well wishes from me to you.

Mysterious forces make magic of some meetings. The way your eyes made gold circles around your pupils in the sunlight transfixed me. Some people peel away everything life coached me to acquire.  Some people dissolve time with their words.  You encompass both forces of nature.   My armored manners fell to silly sentiments when I met you.  We were a pair of poorly behaved third-graders: all jokes and joy.  Words spilled with the ease of decades around someone I’d known for minutes.  

Rapid closeness triggers our walls.  Trust hasn’t been established and suddenly, we both feel the resistance of life around us.  We saw each other left, were reminded in little intermissions that we each had lives before each other.  Connection motivates people to overpromise, but we were both promised to so many other things.  Our time never felt like ours.

I don’t want my “what’s up” to trespass on your space.  If this is more bind than connection, let the silence untether you. I know friendships go both ways, but do I dare disturb your peace? Your privacy? I interpret your unanswered texts as stop signs.  I cannot chase your absence without betraying myself.  Life itself is an interruption.  People create the time for things they value amidst the chaos.   I’ve reminded you how my time is available for you, my calendar is an open book for you.  But even open books close, collect dust, flip through months of marked engagements.

I hear your name in cities neither one of us sleeps in.  I miss you.  Without wish or agenda, I treasure your existence.  I hope life is gentle with you on the days I don’t hear about.  I hope the sun still lights gold halos around your pupils and you’re laughing loud these days.  I hope life conspires to reunite us, but if she doesn’t, if this friendship was meant to be momentary, I’m glad I met you.  When the concrete chants your name or I see your favorite movie, only joy arises.  We lost touch but are always linked.

Yours,

Marisa

Radical Platonic Love

Have you ever seen the movie Moonlight?  Do you remember the final scene?  A Miami apartment living room after dark, the muted colors of the furniture reflect the hour. Chiron, …

In Opposition to (s)He’s Just Not that Into You

This is not a love story. Well… it is, just not in the way you think or I thought in 2014.

Z

I don’t have fingers and toes enough to count people who know me as an idea–

Fashion me in fiction

because reality is a heavier matter.

To them, I am a caricature.

 

I met you and the alphabet has been backwards ever since.

You get me.

I met you and before the outrage and opulence,

You understood the color of my soul.

There is a subtle addiction to those who recognize our spirits,

Even when I worry it’s run away from me.

You catch it.

 

Your sound is unencumbered violins,

Hurried melody, harmony, velvet smooth.

Your smell is something sweet from the kitchen as I sit in the living room–

tantalized even from afar.

 

Your heart proceeds everything else about you,

magnanimous enough that it makes me softer.

 

I know what it’s like to be regarded as a work of fiction–

To hear yourself as an idea rather than a person.

But you–

You understood me.

 

Thank you for being my friend and loving me as I am.

 

Best Friend

Our conversations trail

longer than the cities we’ve wondered.

You know the punch line before I’ve made the joke.

My narratives are your memories,

You remind my of the plot points when I’ve lost the words.

Continents couldn’t split our connection.

And every time you return,

I become the freckle-faced ten year old you befriended.