I Gave Each Friend A Word, And In That Word A World

So the nerdfighters are organising a poetry book! Still trying to decide which poems to submit. Wrote this poem a little while back and forgot to publish it.

I Gave Each Friend A Word, And In That Word A World

How easy it is to write for a friend

This thought strikes me, hard

In my head and my heart.

My words are sluggish, my thoughts are rusty

And my motivation, cries, curled up in a ball

Weeping at how easy it used to be.

What greater inspiration, than to write for the joy it elicits

In a community of fellow authors, poets, children.

In a web of friends, discovering themselves, through shared loves

Of books and school and words,

Words that linked us, from a thousand miles away.

Everything ends.

Everything changes.

Life and time and hurt wore down our precious family.

And when I look back, I have lenses of nostalgia on my eyes.

That tinge my thoughts with longing and regret.

And when my closest friend of all comes into view

They are tinged with betrayal.

For a friend I now know only as a ghost,

Talking to a fiction from twenty years ago.

That kind, scared girl I know,

She was living as her past

And she told the truth at last

And it hurt.

I changed, I made new friends.

And I love them very much.

But I do not share my words, my thoughts, my heart

Like I used to.

And they don’t share theirs with me.

So my words dissolved with my friends

Scattered away on the wind that tore away my ties.

And left me isolated,

Lonely.

Without a voice.

It’s hard.

To shout into the void.

Without the reassurance of company.

But the quiet ate away at me,

Turned from a companion to an abuser.

So I have to try.

I hope you can hear me.