You have been friends a long time,
Stuck between the familiarity of family and the oddness of otherness,
And maybe in that time a hand had lingered too long,
A hug had been tighter than it needed to be,
Deep secrets too eagerly shared,
Trysts and tirades too easily gossiped,
But what are friends for?
And sure, maybe daydreams of the future had always involved her,
While the men were obscured and abstract,
But such is the way for friendships formed in childhood that survive such tumultuous
times.
And hey, maybe her husband’s voice grates against your ears like a thousand razor blades,
And dreams of his throat ripped bloody from his body are fun,
But hell, who isn’t a little fucked up?
And yet, you can not but lay blame on her,
For it was she that suggested such foolish things as experimentation,
Oh, your traitorous heart did beat so fast in your ears,
And so fast inside her mouth.
Now divots scatter your skin,
And you chew your fingernails like candy waiting for another touch of her,
Like a junkie too deep in it to quit, but too smart to try and steal what you need.
So here you sit in her kitchen,
A monument to marble,
And are trying not to lose your mind as you hear the Bric-à-brac of her children
playing not two rooms over,
And maybe, or yes, there is blood pooling in your mouth as you hold your tongue for every
agonising second that you don’t choose to flee.
But both you and her know you won’t,
So you make another line of scratches into the middle of your palm and drip blood on the
marble that she’ll have to clean and drink your tea,
For everyone knows a caged bird never sings,
Especially one who has made its own instrument of confinement.
Featured image, Baigneuses étendues sur l’herbe by Félix Valloton (1 January 1893) held in the public domain via Wikimedia.
