The Poem That Saved My Friendship
We hadn't spoken in three years. A poem got us talking again.
We hadn't spoken in three years. The fight had been about something stupid, a thing I can't even remember now, but the silence had grown into a wall and neither of us knew how to climb it.
I wrote him a poem. Not a good poem, not the kind that wins contests, but the kind that says the thing you can't say out loud. I wrote about the way we used to sit on the roof and talk about nothing, the way we used to split a cigarette and a sandwich and a dream, the way we used to be the same person in two bodies.
I didn't send it. I put it in a drawer and I forgot about it, the way you forget about the things you write for yourself.
Two years later I found the poem, and I sent it. Not in a letter, not in a call, just the poem, in the mail, the old way, the way you send something that you can't take back.
He called me the next week. We didn't talk about the fight. We talked about the poem, and the way the roof still smelled the same, and the way we still remembered the same dreams. The poem had done the talking for us.
We are friends again now. Not the way we were, but the way we are, which is better. The poem is in a frame in his hallway, next to the photo of us at his wedding. The poem is the bridge we built between the silence and the talking.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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