We laugh.

Chaotically, loudly, freely.

A watermelon bursting into saturated, vibrant pieces

when the thousandth rubberband strangles it.

The sound fills me with nostalgia.

I hate nostalgia,

but not with you.

Cause your bare face screams authenticity

and your unfiltered quips are a plush pillow to rest on.

With you, it's a nap.

A nap in the park when the air smells cold and fresh,

like mint without the actual mint smell.

In our comforting silence, I'm wrapped in a cinnamon blanket.

In the moonlight and chants on Friday night at the Kotel.

I didn’t know me then, 

But you seemed to.

You're sentimental.

I hate it.

But I love you.

You weren't there for sand castles on the beach, 

melting ice cream, 

or early Christmas mornings with presents flooding the base of the tree.

But you bring it back to me.

You help to heal the broken.

Blurring the cracks as if I am the porcelain

and you're the bubble wrap on my way to be repaired.

I had never been to the Lincoln memorial.

Now staring at the reflecting pool,

I see us,

mirroring our timelines as they open, intertwine,

and veer in new directions.

I've seen the pool drained

and so have you.

You always fill it back up.

You're the fizz in an orange.

Our music blaring through the windows on Clara Barton parkway.

Definitely an ice-cold lemonade on fifth grade field day after I ran the relay.

And I don't know if it's that yellow cotton Budweiser t-shirt you always wear to bed

But you are my childhood best friend.

And I didn't even know you then.

another poem

a poem about and for my best friend

I am a fragile glass on a wobbly shelf. 

I am a timid animal; a meerkat in the skittish shadows, fearing the searing sun that illuminates around me. 

Bees live under my skin, buzzing anxiously in a hive with no opening. They want to fly away, but they are trapped.

If the bees could escape, I would be calm; relaxed. 

Would telling people my worries, the true thoughts I have so constantly, calm the bees? Set them free forever? But no. Will the bees multiply? 

I sit in my hopelessness, like a boat without an ore in the middle of the water. 

I want help, I need help, I can’t even help myself, but I’ll try. 

The feeling grows, like a tree trunk whose spiral continuously ejects into the sky; layers on layers. Anxiety about having anxiety; about telling others; what will they think of me?

Peppermint and doves roam, soon clogging and cluttering.

Crows lurk.

A cloak envelops me. Suffocating. The staff pries itself into my hand. Splintering. Painful.

I wonder who I am, what I want, and what they think. 

Disappointment. But it’s always my own.

Will they carve out my weaknesses with a fragile and caring hand, or with one that does not mind cracking the sculpture? Will they take me on as their new muse, observe with appreciation, or walk past in ignorance of my potential? 

When the door opens, she is never there.

She refuses to be found.

Where does escape to? Can I come?

I can’t move.

A statue. In solitude, cement, stuck in motion, but unable to move. 

You can sense the eagerness, its desire to take action, even its attempt, but it remains frozen. Just take one thing at a time. 

I am stuck. Stuck in motion. Stuck in place.

Stuck derives from Old English stician meaning “to pierce, stab, transfix, goad.” My mind is the cause of my stuckness. My mind embodies this definition with stabbing thoughts, transfixing me into a state of rumination and worry. 

Just be myself? 

But myself is stuck. 

I’ll stay stuck.