Poetic Reflection

A Friendship Rented like a Car

I was five years old, Kindergarten, and I had shoes that lit up with each tentative step towards this new idea: “grade school”. The last experience I had with school, I had zipped zippers and buttoned buttons. This time, my teacher threw a cup of water at the chalk board and asked us to check it the next day when we all returned. A small boy who would grow up to be a big painful memory, said he liked those shoes, and our friendship was conceived as that water evaporated. It was simple back then.

Soon we weren’t five any longer, but in 5th grade. We were the outcasts, the odd ones out, but we didn’t mind as long as we had each other to sit with at lunch. Did I know someday I’d sit across from him in a diner and wonder if I’d ever see him again? We added more friends around that table, most of which went their own ways through life away from mine.

But High School came, the “big merger” school, and we wondered if our friendship could survive it. But we had our memories together and it helped us from straying apart. We still sat at the lunch table together when our block schedules allowed.

Fast forward four years and we were a different kind of freshmen, at two different schools in one large hyphenated town. I joined a fraternity, soon he would join mine too. We were Brothers now, just as we always were.

Jump forward another five and I invite you to be a part of my wedding party. Our friendship was old enough to drink, and I was hoping you’d make a Toast. You said you didn’t own a plain white button down and solid black pants so you couldn’t be there. Was this the beginning of the end when you relented and bought those slacks?

Just two more years, the world shut down, and you found love at my virtual game night, or so I thought. This relationship was long enough to be your second longest romantic. Many months of joy ending in many nights and months of tears from her when you stopped returning her calls. Is this how you end all of your relationships?

Three years later, and I keep you and her apart in my life, I’ve been in the middle since my parent’s divorce: what did you expect from me? She gives me the clothes of yours she couldn’t bear to donate and I’m right back in the middle. A camp staff shirt, a distant school’s zip up, an essential collection of places you love and adore. You seemed to not want them or me when you wouldn’t return my texts either. All I said was that our friendship could finally rent a car and go on a roadtrip.

Soon you would stop returning my calls. You were busy, and of course life has thrown us all spitballs. Just like those real bullies all those years ago. My therapist told me I couldn’t hold your life in my hands. 

One year later, I had stop texting all together, and I couldn’t hold our friendship in my heart any longer.