I Wish Being Best Friends was as Easy as Saying "Yes" When You Asked if we Could be Best Friends

I.

You should know that I fall in love with boys I play board games with

It's nothing personal, It's just-

When I get competitive, sometimes I get romantic

And before we commit to this, you should know I won't believe you when you say

You love everyone or you hate everyone because I know people you don't

And I think if you knew them you might be a bit more ambivalent

And I should probably tell you that I will always be ugly when I'm wine drunk

Especially if you really want to date her and especially if she is, like, really into fire spinning

And, no, she's not really MY type, but as long as YOU'RE happy, I FULLY support your decision

But when that doesn't work out,

Yeah, I'll still be watching SVU re-runs; and, yes, you can talk about it even during Stabler scenes.

II.

Who asks someone if they can be your best friend?

I mean really?

III.

I met someone today who told me they can't love someone until they've seen their worst

And I think you should know that I'm not my worst self anymore

I am not a collapsable woman and breaking down isn't realness

-finally-

I will show you the unmarked graves where the parents of my lovers buried their jars of children

We can bounce pebbles off the paint stripped houses in Cape Cod

and I'll tell you about a time I picked the stitches out of a boy's stomach with a letter opener

How I bit off my nails to get the dried blood out from under them

There's a farm not twenty minutes south of here we can drive out to

I'll turn off the headlights and you can find Christmas music while I tell you about the last time I saw

my fiance not bleeding out of every hole in his face

But I can't promise I'll break down and cry

I don't grieve much here anymore

IV.

The truth is some months I'm not around

And the loneliness you're left with won't be the costliest price of admission

Because there's no price you can pay for the fast-track, front car ticket to my time and affection

And maybe that's fickle, but that's who I am

And for all that self-awareness, I'm more a coward than I am a Queen some weeks

I will fill my time writing poetry and dropping classes and still telling my mom I'm doing the homework

I will fill my time with more casual things because I can't stand the way my head pounds

when I smoke that much and try to explain to you why I named my first daughter Clementine

V.

I don't mind if you take this as a seasonal position

because I don't promote from within and there aren't a lot of advancement opportunities

and when I say “best friend” and I don't mean someday we will fall in love and have kids

But if you need to confess you love me sometime I understand and I will find ways to love you, too,

I promise I will figure it out with you

I promise I will figure it out with you and hold your hand

and I won't say anything if your next girlfriend is a really bad singer and has browner eyes than mine

VI.

The codeword for bailing on shit parties is always “tangerine”

And I won't talk much in front of your other friends

So make sure you sell me short because what I give you, I can't give them

And I'd hate to disappoint

VII.

I think secretly I'm scared of ever finding a best friend again

The last time I needed someone, like truly needed them

We stayed up until dawn staring at the pin up model I'd torn off my kitchen wall

Until she was all legs and the room stopped spinning

I was moving out of my Chicago apartment

And he didn't leave me alone even when I didn't talk for hours

And he made me eat pizza even when I felt like vomiting

And he made sure I knew "tangerine" did apply to funerals

And I showed him my blackest bruise and we took a picture in the bathroom

In case when I healed up and everyone forgot what happened I wanted to remember for a just a second

And I really miss that kid, you know?

And I think I'd miss you like that, too, if you left

Memories

The Girl with the Brown Cape Coat