Maybe friendship is the poetry!

writing from the friendzone

Hello!

I’m just stepping out of two weeks filled with college friends - our trip to Gulf Shores, a lunch with friends and their new baby, a weekend trip to a tiny town halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis to meet up with a friend I hadn’t seen in over six years!

So, I’ve thought a lot about friendships and how they change and grow and adapt. This idea is the heart of what my novel is about, so it's been a fun thing to see play out in real life - and it makes me feel like maybe I know what I'm talking about as I write!

In the novel, one of the main character’s friends points out that as you get older, the friendships you made when you were young change because you don't NEED your friends in the same way you used to - you don't live together (or in the same block or city or state or part of the country!) and you don't know every single detail about their life! Because that's life! But the friendships can mean even more because they're not based on convenience or desperation or parties or anything other than wanting to spend time together, wanting to continue to know each other.

This weekend, Adam and I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years and her husband, who I’d only ever met via Facetime when this friend and I went to Germany and Austria together during winter break of my senior year of college! Everything about my life is completely different than it was when I saw this friend last! And hers too - she has a baby! Who's a whole real, tiny person that walks already! It's really cool and weird and exciting to see your friends change from girls at frat parties to moms with their shit together!

So, the four of us found ourselves in a tiny town in Missouri. We walked through shops and tried chocolate samples and ate lunch and walked along the river and filled each other in on so many things. And her husband is talkative and Adam is Adam (very talkative!), so my friend and I got to do the thing where we were obviously all walking together but also we were ahead of the guys and deep in our own conversation and grateful to be left alone!

Being friends with someone for so long feels so good because sometimes you sit and laugh about the things you did when you were 22 (like sprint through the Austrian mountains in the night to buy gas station wine to bring back to your AirBnB with a perfect view! And celebrate NYE in Berlin!) and sometimes you talk about completely new things (like babies or moves or travel or all the other things that happen in seven years!) and sometimes the conversation lies somewhere between all these pieces and it’s all calm and gentle and good.

Anyway, I'm feeling extra grateful for friendship lately. And I tried to write a poem about it! It started off good and then I changed it a lot and it got kind of bad and then I fixed it a little and then made it worse again. I've been struggling to write for the last few weeks!

My novel is sitting in a Google folder being commented on by my workshop group and I’m trying to stay away from it for another week! I haven't looked at it or really even thought about it for almost a month, which has been nice but also incredibly anxiety-inducing! I'm very ready to get through this workshop and to get back to work!

I was hoping the time away from the novel would be good for my poetry...but instead, I've watched a lot of TV! And read books! And sat in the park! And gone for walks! And I want to believe these are all things that will bring me to poetry when the time is right, but in reality, I think all my brain power is still dedicated to the novel, even when I'm actively trying not to think about it. So, maybe after this next round of edits, I'll move back toward poetry... I hope so! It keeps feeling like something that's almost coming back to me, but then it doesn't. So, I'm glad I have this space to keep myself somewhat invested in it - to make me dedicate at least a small amount of time to it each week! A draft:

BECAUSE WE WENT TO AUSTRIA ON A WHIM 

When I see snow on a mountain
I think of wine bottles.
How the man at the gas station laughed
as we talked with our hands
because we'd already drank enough
to make our voices high.
We wanted more, not to be drunk
but to remember ourselves.
Do you think we already knew?
How bodies weave patterns
but don't stay in one place, cold
down to the toes. I tossed those boots
with the tan, meshy front 
the day I left the key to the college house.
I remember how I stared at the trash
like it might scream at me.
I should have sent you a picture
but by that point I wanted to live
in a place where we loved each other
without the need to say it.

Two extra things: 1) Adam came up with the “writing from the friendzone” bit less than fifteen seconds after I said, “I don’t know what to put here!” so I’m giving him his rightful credit and 2) Adam’s job every week is to get a picture of me to use as the cover for this letter and this week the only picture he took was this weird one of me in ridiculous “bride to be” sunglasses him and my friend made me put on in a little gift shop! (Clearly, I’m doing a great job of stepping into the “bride” role, it’s looking sooooo good on me! - we did pick a photographer I’m obsessed with though, so at least things are moving along!)