Willow

So, my old friend has a baby, my old 85 pound friend, my friend from high school who went with me to college, the first college, before we both found other colleges, before we never saw each other again, before I ran into her at the Gap, the Water Tower Gap of all places. She was working. I was trying to find something to wear to a wedding. Before she found me on Facebook. Before we wrote a couple heart felt messages, and now spend every lonely day together. She had a baby a couple of hours ago, and I think that is very nice. I think that is very happy and nice.

I'm also reminded of all the very complicated creams that can ice those early twenty relationships.

I'm reminded of the nights in the back seat of her boyfriends car, on the floor of her boyfriends dining room, spooning contact highs, and making love to empty sleeping bags. I'm reminded of how much I loved her parents, and how much they did for me, and of how I obviously loved them more than I loved her, in the end anyway.

I'm reminded of the trips to Ikea, I'm reminded of how we set up our play house, and then cocooned into our separate bedrooms and drifted.

I'm reminded of the hurtful things she said, I'm reminded of all the things I didn't say.

I'm happy for her. I am.

I don't know her any more. I haven't met her husband. I'm happy. I wish I could meet her now for the first time.

I carried my laundry this afternoon to the M & M coin Lavanderia. I carried my laundry in her laundry bag. For some reason I did all of her laundry the two years we lived together, every single sock and shirt, when we moved on, her laundry bag just got mixed up into my truck. So, I'm folding my tank tops this afternoon on an orange counter in Ravenswood, and I jog my memory down to the bottom of that bag.

She's probably having her baby right about now.

I say to my self, my cyber space networking self.

I say click click yes indeed, still gooey with vagina juice. Beautiful.

I'm agreeing here, I'm confirming with you that Facebook is weird. That friends are lazy, and the older you get the less energy you have to be nasty. And the older you get the older you are. And you're at that age where everyone is pregnant. And you've never wanted a black homosexual teenager more, but neither of you have real jobs, and you have a strong affinity for drinking till 6am, and sometimes you cross the street to the nice green park while you're waiting for your clothes to dry, and you sit on a bench, and you watch the sunset, and the dogs, and in these 40 minutes to yourself, you think; this is the life.

~Skin & Toast