When your friend cries in Panera,
when she is so tired of being independent and alone,
don’t tell her she’s the strongest person you know.
When you want to share how light you feel now,
a year into the separation, how you no longer curl
into a ball on the sofa, how you smile sometimes,
even on your own, just be silent—as still and patient
as birds before dawn.
Don’t exclaim how lucky she is, how you would kill
to have her perfect life where she is solvent and free
to travel the world at her leisure.
Embrace her loneliness, her desire for companionship;
remember that time you sobbed when a friend made
you a sandwich, when you realized, outside of your mother
and random waitresses, no one had served you food in years.
Remember what your marriage felt like with a man
who did not commune over tea or coffee or wine,
no side-by-side cooking, no good night or good morning.
Remember the emptiness, the isolation.
Recognize her fear, acknowledge her dread of falling,
of not being found.
Recall what friendship feels like, that sometimes misery
needs company. Don’t be the happy sparrow full of spring
song when she needs you to hear her sorrow; wear a plume
she will recognize, become the common loon—
answer her call.
is a Professor of English at Ohio University Southern. Light & Shadow, Shadow & Light from Main Street Rag (2018) is her first full-length poetry collection, and her chapbook What the Grimm Girl Looks Forward To is from Finishing Line Press (2016). Her latest chapbook, The Blue Wife Poems, is from Kelsay Books (2022). She edits Sheila-Na-Gig online and Sheila-Na-Gig Editions:
https://sheilanagigblog.com/
