Thank You For Being A Friend
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You are this way, I am that. Why don’t we know each other at all?
Even though we know everything about each other, there is more to know.
Why do I sing in a room alone? Notes I don’t know, but they know me.
No one else can hear it but you, my song. I sing it for you.
There is no bartender taking my order. I’d like a margarita, with salt, and an umbrella.
I’d like ice with that, a twist of lime. I am particular about my drinks and the things I say.
Let's have a drink, you and I, and talk about the stuff we can't say sober.
I told you nothing, particularly, nothing. What is friendship but a forgetting?
I forget what you did to me, what you said. Especially what you didn’t say.
We never told each other that we were special, we don’t use that word.
We tried to act as if we were competing for love for one another.
We do not allow ourselves to say what is wrong, how we feel.
We would ruin what we are, if we told the truth. You are like a sister, but I don’t know you.
I know your favorite color and how you like your coffee.
But I don’t know what sings inside you, what flies in your eyes.
Where are you in this room? Are you even in here?
Where are you really standing? In a room full of air, with nothing to breathe.
Breathe with me, be with me, be me. Understand me, live inside me, if even for a moment.
Do you understand my words? Do I say the wrong thing, with the wrong voice, at the wrong time?
There is a window in my room and I can see life and you outside of it. I am trapped in life.
The only thing I’m allowed to do is live. If I want to die, they tell me, you must live.
If I live, they want to kill me. They say you must drink the poison, but you have to live.
You taught me how to live. You didn’t let me die, you drank the poison with me.
I am a little girl, with a little face, and far too many birthmarks to deny I was born.
Photo by Evelyn Mostrom on Unsplash
I exist, like apples exist on a tree, but I am being squeezed into a cider that no one wants to drink.
Except you. You drink me in. You have never spit me out, you like my taste, even when I go sour.
Maybe I am the poison that will eventually kill us. What am I besides a potion with no name?
What will you do with me, what will you say at my funeral. Did you know her?
Was she that woman, was I, am I, that girl. Somebody you used to know.
We have known each other for a lifetime, we are friends. But where do we go from here?
I have not told you everything, everything I am. Everything I fear. Everything you are to me.
Sometimes we are strangers, sometimes you read my soul and hand it back to me.
Sometimes I hate you, but more times I love how we laugh together, not at each other.
I have never laughed with anyone the way I laugh with you, you make my soul smile.
And you are not even sure you have a soul, but I know it, I’ve seen it.
You are good, and that is why I keep you around. We have hurt each other, in the midst of all this.
But we are real, with each other, we are here, for each other, we are one, with each other.
Who could I be without you? Would I even exist? When I no longer exist I will still be with you.
nina
