becomes slippery my flat-letting friend.
Are we friends?
We’re different, you and I, I think –
my school friend and I were different too,
despite our names –
she’d set her sights on travel, medicine or
aid-work – had researched charities she wanted to be
part of.
We went together to a fundraiser for Médecins
Sans Frontières, eagerly she spoke to glowing boys with
lanyards, clipboards, worthy as a seeded loaf each one.
What a drag!
I wanted cigar smoke in a tent.
I wanted mud and salt and selfishness.
There was a boy in school who was in love with her –
though she had little interest in anyone back then.
One night down at the beach – big bonfire,
Smirnoff Ice – he talked and talked to me about his love
for her – her eyes and hair and beret.
I waited patiently
then when there was a pause,
I kissed him.
It was clumsy, boring, he looked furious – stood up and
brushed the sand off of his jeans dramatically.
You’re not her, he said,
as if I didn’t know.
She was the sweeter, softer one of us,
found my eagerness for life a little jarring.
Why would you kiss him though? She asked me. You
don’t like him either.
I guess we’d begun to drift apart already, before my
summer in the tall house by the docks.
I’d been staying there about a month,
was missing home and so convinced her to come over
for a party they were having.
It was fun. We danced and danced,
played through the roster of our in-jokes,
swigged our beers, made-out with one another for a
group of lads because they asked us to.
Twins! Kissing!
