I Miss The Old Friends That I Used To Consider Family

Knobby knees knocking into each other,
Posture not yet stiff,
Looking like a wilting flower,
She walks down uninviting hallways.
Taunts and nasty comments flitter by her nose,
Butterflies gently scraping her skin.

 

Dreary and decrepit,
Just like her lame friends.
Friday nights on the piano;
Saturdays on the phone,
With friends from the internet;
Sunday mornings for God
And nights for unholy books.

 

Glasses slipping down the nose,
Only to be pushed right back
By a stubby index finger.
Greasy, matted, and out of control,
The hair can only be tamed by a rubber band,
Subverted into a pony tail,
Emulating middle class suburban living.

 

Adonis walks by
And, of course, she drops all her books.
He could care less,
Doesn’t even look back.
Yet, strangers strolling past stare her down,
As if some animal escaped the zoo.
Too preoccupied, she only looks after him,
Wondering about the day he’ll look back.

 

Superwoman comes to the rescue,
A cheeky girlfriend helps her up.
Friends are her family,
But funny how families break apart years later.
For now, they’re both pseudo-punk-nerds,
Attempting at hipster cool,
But never quite there.
My metal jewelry to complement your red streaks.
My pirated Bon Jovi downloads to your Tupac disks.

 

Our solace is in the simple things:
Sneering at miniature Barbie’s strutting in heels,
And enjoying the latest teen fiction book.
We exchange gossip and dreams,
All while trying to make it to morning math.
In a few minutes time,
I’m a blooming sunflower;
You made everything better.
I’ll even skip class with you,
To escape others’ searing comments.

 

But not today,
We separate our own ways.
I, to algebra,
And you, introduction to math.
Years later, I’ll be cooped at home,
Immersed in loose leaf sheets,
Studying for the next test,
And you’ll be at a new friend’s house,
Having a swig, maybe a smoke,
Killing off yesterday’s brain cells.

 

For now, we don’t think about that.
We’re only jamming,
Dancing to our own beat,
In our awkward way.
No one knows what twerking is,
But who cares?
Neither of us ever had a first kiss,
And the closest we got to a “boyfriend”
Was holding hands.

 

Times have, thankfully, gotten better.
A straight posture, curvier hips, and concave contact lenses;
No more lonely evenings with Ashlee Simpson on the radio.
But sometimes I’ll go back,
I’ll look past my ungraceful gait,
Awkward teenage face and nervous ways,
And think of a time when I was with my old family.