I have sharpened my pen for moments like this,
Filled the knifepoint with enough ink to poison anyone.
And now that I’m wounded,
Examining my pride like a tire leaking air,
Hearing the sourceless hissing,
I find only that ink is useless in moments like this.
No bodies to stab—and no ears to hear it—
Just the black of the barrel that holds my reserves…
If I could turn it out and dye the world over
Maybe trees would absorb the pitch-colored spew,
And perhaps over time it would climb up the trunk
And the trees would be changed for the ink that they’d drunk.
But I store the reserves and dip my nib careful
and shake from the trust that escapes with a hiss.
I’ve sharpened my pen for moments like this.
I realize that sending a poem without context might be a strange thing to receive in your inbox. But I’ve promised myself I’d share more of my work, and I wrote this poem late at night while I couldn’t sleep because I was struggling over a thorny social situation.
It’s led me to reflect on friendship—its ever-changing borders, and its quiet demands for nourishment and care.
In many ways, being a friend is a strange sort of vow, a promise to compromise pieces of ourselves. It is a self-deceiving exercise, an exchange of emotional commerce that must never be framed as such for fear of losing the deal altogether. It’s a dance from which there is no escape, and we cling to our partners for as long as we’re able.
I’ve struggled with friendship my entire life. I could speak about it for hours and still provide you no definition, let alone offer any tips for keeping such a thing alive.
But here is the paradox that keeps me up at night:
We need it like air.
We cannot make it ourselves.
It requires that we chop up pieces of our heart to trade.
But offering pieces of our heart to others is rarely safe and seldom encouraged. So we disguise them. We dress up these pieces of ourselves in fun little costumes so they hardly resemble the original and hope that we can sneak those pieces of our heart through their defenses.
So that at long last, when the forgery is discovered, so much of us lives in them that humility, forgiveness, and reconciliation have a chance to catch fire.
Despite the imperfections in the product.
Despite the hiccups in delivery.
Despite the wanting method of exchange.
