WOMAN

My best friend, lost.  Her beauty (she is beautiful): smokey, wholesome, supple.  We did everything together.  What a world we had!  Vanished, spun to darkness, silence.

We were a splendid pair, our lives the bright laces, obtuse, riotous, on the simplest pair of gray shoes, bumping and skipping - oh we dirtied ourselves in amusing endeavors!  We planned everything.   Maps and stories and secrets on pillows, shared slumbers with sugarplums fairies, spoke of stories untold, treasures undiscovered, rubies in the sand, if only we would look closer.  Our procedures measured carefully, written again, strange strategies, only to be crumpled (we are wild, we are whim!) and thrown to the garbage.  As we grew, our plans expanded into others, lovers, lively frames, places rashly trashed, we dove into our grimy bins!  So full, so complex, we were swimming amid white waters and paper fish.  Phantasms and shadows, sharks or spinning blades, of doubt pulled at us; a hint of despair, could it be?  Do we dream differently?

It was a slow process, untying a double knot, loops cemented in one thousand days of clay; one I regret and a regret I live with.  This is life, peculiar and extraordinary... this is what happens, and what continues.

It was a though there was a field; ravishing, beguiling, the slithering grasses, clandestine, whispers of possibility in golden, sinking beams.  We were both drawn to it, curious beings, girls.  It was as though we ran through it, only seeing the space, scarcely conscious of each other, our sister, twin soul.  We ran, hushed, breathless, me for the birds and her for the birches.  The bark on her hands was as soft as the wings on mine.  Flutter.  It was as though, in our rapture, in our release (oh world!  What wonders you kept from us!) we did not see the night come.  It was as though we sat in the snakes and watched each other, our glowing faces (bright eyes, wide smile, ordinary, so natural) wane into a universe we thought was our own.  What tricks you infinite devil!  What temptations! We were enchanted, ensconced in honeyed spells outside of which reality grew, her grandfather ailed.  She awoke, shaken back to sadness, the cold, the salient drip of tears.  I stayed, viscous illusions under my feathers, sticky fingers.  In my absence the old man died.  Our friendship faded beside his figure, wise and comfortable, layered.

It was as though we missed each other, our hands briefly touching as we walked between bodies and pavement, mistaking one-another for a stranger, not even raising our eyes, brushing away wind-blown bangs, to confirm that fleeting, momentary sense of familiarity.  One second, an echoing laugh, a ringing, distant call, gone with the pungent fumes of cigarette, just out of reach, around a sharp corner in time, the sidewalk ending.

Where do you hide sweet friendship?  We will find you.