someone once confidently assured me, nodding her wrinkled head,
"well, friends are just practice for a real relationship!"
and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
i keep examining all the different kinds of laughs ive heard throughout my life
and i remember a hug, surrounded by the pouring rain as we cried goodbye into the other's shoulder, and group chats that make me laugh day after day, and a concert where my smile felt the most genuine it had in weeks, months, years as my friend shouted another joke in my ear
and it doesnt feel like practice.
it's the blood, tears, adrenaline in your veins of a game.
and you win some. you really do. i have medals i hope i wear for the rest of my life, beaming and supporting as always.
but ive lost. i see it over and over again in the way i pass my old best friends house with my eyes on the sidewalk, or all my unanswered texts about something im proud of, or even the way the one i labeled last year as the person i felt closest to hasnt really talked to me in months.
defeat burns.
but i at least know theres something to play for, while others are busy on the bleachers. i feel it.
and im getting a little sick of being told it doesnt matter unless i have a boys hand to hold, as if i wasnt enough, as if my heart wasnt filled with platonic love, as if my life is meaningless until i find my "other half".
im whole already. im complete.
YOU ARE READING
open letters to no one
Poésiepoems I can't keep to myself. things to get off my chest with verbs, nouns, adjectives. life lessons I have no one to share with. texts I really should send but don't have the courage to. things I can't say aloud. in essence, words I want to scream...
