Friend

I feel my heart

breaking

as she grows distant.

My heart broke

when she was

cold

to me.

Without words,

she declared that we

were not friends.

 

Timeless days and nights

I have wondered this:

How do you know

when someone is your friend?

A shared and

superficial affection?

When they sit near you?

Or do they simply

tolerate

you?

 

I thought we had

something more.

You may have thought

the same

at one point.

Somewhere in our friendship,

our views of each other

changed.

It may have been

your fault

or it may have been

mine.

Still, that does not

dispel

the palpable taste of

sorrow, guilt, and confusion

mixed into the concoction

that keeps choking me.

 

I can’t breathe.

What did I do?

Aren’t we still friends?

Why must I ask?

Why can’t I be told,

“You are my friend”?

Why must it all

be so confusing?

I am suffocated.

I cannot belay this

pain

to anyone.

It makes me die inside,

hoping for your love.

 

Please help me

through this.

I can’t hold on

any longer.

Author's Note

Earlier this year, I encountered an old friend that I had not seen in a while. We hit it off right at the start. Somewhere along the line, there must have been a misunderstanding between us. She began to grow cold and distant towards me. Finally, I asked her what the problem was, and she replied that I didn't understand her. I wished she would have told me before, but it was too late. We were not friends anymore.
The next few poems that I post will deal with my loss of this friend.

Ultimately, I wish she had told me. I wish that she hadn't been silent. Sometimes things aren't always better kept inside. In this case, maybe it was for the better that we broke up. We are both happier this way.

Reviews

[Sarah Khalil]

Thank you SO MUCH for writing about a heartbreak brought on by a friend instead of a romantic attachment. You rarely see this theme being discussed in poetry. Because of that alone this was an instant favorite from the first stanza.

Normally I dislike the excessive use of caesura and enjambment that you have, but the breaking apart of the rhythm to itty bitty pieces reflects the sentiments behind this so well. Instead of cancelling out the emphasis because everything is cut off, every since phrase really does come off as profound. As if I read each and every line on its own, and each and every line was another laceration.

[E.V. Black]

Friends provide half of the heartache in our lives, but people don't care to write about them because they don't seem poetic. For me, poem after poem was leeching from my heart and scrawled into my notebook. I write like this, and I will never change it. I am glad that you love this, for it brings joy to my heart.
Thank you so much for your review, my friend! It means much to me.

[Rahul]

Third phrase's powerful much if i say. Great job, nicely penned, i loved the theme.

[E.V. Black]

Thank you for your review!

[Zero_Edge88]

"In the end we will not be remembered by the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I contemplated on that line yesterday morning till I took a nap later that afternoon. I was up all night writing a book (and still got to finish it lol).

Anyway, to the degrees of our own perspective, an enemy is but the one who told us the water is shallow despite being too deep. They are the ones who ran on the rain with us without an umbrella. They burned their bridges too early before you knew it.

Meanwhile the friend gave us a rope, a towel and a ladder. The rope to keep us from drifting further apart from each other. The towel to dry ourselves so we don't get sick immediately. The ladder that when a bridge is down at least there is a way up. There is an act of silence in the things we do to preserve this friendship as to an act of insolence to form a schism. We tug too tight they cut us loose. We soak ourselves again they don't offer it. We are not there to hold them on the other side they drop us. It is these forms of silence we don't see everyday.

It is tragic with the loss of a friendship is but one too many we can never expect especially after so many foundations and even secrets were built to maintain it. To who we choose as friends as to know our enemies are is one that we are capricious about instinctively. A machination that we cannot even begin to disrupt. Thank you for the good read, it reminded me of so many somebodies that I have met in life.

[E.V. Black]

Thanks so much for your wonderful review. This friendship tore me apart on the inside.