lisa

our friendship started with the backhanded excuse of poverty

for years and years i believed you to be the mary sue of reality

pulling yourself up from nothing like a shadow standing on its own two feet

you had a face like the sunshine that polluted our vision after closing the backdoor

orange basketball stains on the floor of my garage when it was raining too hard to play outside

on good days we combed through rocks to find peace in the dirt as hydrangeas grew around our ankles

but you wouldn't let them keep us there

you pulled away from childhood as though it was merely a spiders web holding you down

intricately designed but easily broken with too much silk to pry from your fingers

you instead fell into the crafted path of a downtrodden child, 

intending to blanket your sadness with downers mixed with bad decisions and real talk (ironic, right?)

but instead blinding yourself to empathy, to sensibility to honesty to all those good words we learned so early in life 

precisely, inevitably, so that we would use them first

i began to notice my own collapse, following you like a dog into water

pulling my own weight but still ending up in front to catch you when you stumbled

it took four years of shame and mistrust to realize you were not

who i was going to be

you were put into my life to be used as a memory

because even when you pull the veil over your eyes 

you can still see the lines of my body getting smaller and smaller as i abandon ship

I have left you fully, without any chance of recovery through college or kids or storms that make pitch black of the day

because the world turns too fast sometimes

when the aching legs of our exhausted futures are slimmed down to 'and they lived happily ever after'