1. The Friend

what's it been / couple of years / it comes down to / restless me and / useless you / when i die they'll tell you where to send the flowers

Best Friend, 2004.

They were best friends.
Nothing is ever that simple,
but in this case the description will suffice.

One, shorter and almost stocky.
Thick hair redolent of dark European blood
buried in her past like a secret.

The other tall,
blonde and yet without the lissom grace
one would assume
for the comparison.

No ying and yang,
just complementary colors and
slightly flaring hips and longer legs
Sturdier at the ankles.
And quicker wit, a filigree-laden foil paired against
a kitchen knife.

Many hours spent over the telephone and
taking boring trips to each other's house
until it all amounted to a collection of years.
Changes marked by photographs
scattered on her closet floor;
"here we look like the Beatles,
and I don't know what I was doing there."

One does, in these situations,
share a good deal with the other
so you are known inside out.
From the tone of voice warning irritation
to the quiet pain of bad choices one must shoulder alone,
risking mockery or worse,
sympathy.

A closeness, tenuous,
is forged.
It is tested against boyfriends,
drugs,
girls who are prettier,
smarter,
older,
stranger.
During those days familiarity is a curse
because who wants to be reminded of what you
said/did
last year in a moment of weakness?
When you are struggling against the weight of
peculiarity,
you do not want to be understood.

Somehow
they still ended up
tangled together on one rucked-up
double bed.
Laughing, lights out, barely clad in the summer heat of
California.
You could feel it through the walls of the apartment.
You could feel it down to your very bones,
or maybe that was something
else.

Maybe it was her hands moving efficiently
down a slide of tanned skin so unlike her own.
Muttering about God-knows-what
to fill the air and pretend that this is utterly normal,
that everyone does it.
The sugar smell of strawberry lotion slicking everything;
neither knows what skin is what.

It is so close that it is causing her skin to crawl,
even as the other says
"hey, do you want to try something?"
while on the curious subject of girls
touching
girls.

A pause.
"Maybe later."

Her hands go back to working methodically,
like she does this every day
or like it doesn't even matter.

It doesn't, in the grand scheme of things.
After all, you never fall in love with your best friend.
That's for fools
and the movies.