intimately she goes

my best friend is very social. not very intimate. i am very intimate, not very social. we are, together, quite a pair. i'm a dark lady, she's a blonde. quite the duality, but together, we laugh, we talk, we enjoy each other.

up in her room today, i lay on the floor while she got ready, reading her my latest poems, and she listened intently. we discussed our past weeks, it's been awhile since we've been together, and went to lunch at an indian restaurant.

we met other friends there, and it was a lovely time. laughing ensued, and the food was delicious.

back at home, i read a poem to her that i cried when i wrote, cried when i read aloud at the intensive, and cried again when i read to her today. i looked up to see, she was crying with me.

i'm so vulnerable right now.

we both cried together, for the complicated lives of women. commiserating and celebrating, through tears. laughing and weeping the way women have always done, through the ages.

this is what we do for one another. i reconnect her with intimacy, she exposes me to the world. reluctant i go, intimately she goes. we are a pair. i the dark lady, she the blonde. a poem for her came today, at least i know it's cooking. she had asked me about a poem, not long before those on the periphery of my life, those regularly subjected to my work wonder when they'll turn up.

well today she has become a poem to me.

and in the barrage of poems i read to her, purging poems, leaving poems, loving poems, hers stirs in me, a light spot in my darkness. and i wait for her to come, fully formed from the clamshell and foam. my companion of middle age. my friend.