Poetry and I met in freshman English,

and I hated her instantly.

Neither of us were popular, but she

at least had a reputation while

I was still stuck on potential.

 

I was going to be a “serious writer,”

but she was already an artist.

She was changing the world.

 

While our teacher critiqued me--“Prose,

you really should use fewer adverbs. And you have

an unhealthy relationship with sentence fragments”--

Poetry was praised for her ingenuity. She made up

new words, ignored punctuation, and wrote flowing

lines in meter I’ll never be able to count.

 

I did my best to ignore her, until she started asking

me for book recommendations, writing prompts,

if I wanted to hang out sometime.

Surely this was all an act--

she was pretending to like me,

to be like me. We didn’t have anything in common.

This masquerade would be stripped away

very soon. But.

 

Poetry helped me set up the nets for volleyball practice

while the rest of the team flirted with football players

and the coaches’ patience.

She came to all my games and sat behind the bench

to tell me jokes when I didn’t get to play.

 

I knew which boys were bad;

Poetry kissed them anyway.

When her shoulders mimicked dog-eared corners

from old books, I helped unfold them with green tea

ice cream and bad karaoke.

 

When I was too embarrassed to ask my crush,

Poetry was my date to the prom.

She kept me company as I stood in the corner,

far from the dance floor.

 

When I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d call Poetry,

and she called me when she wanted to stay awake.

Sometimes the best friends are the most unexpected.

 

Now Poetry is studying abroad

while I work and attend college ten miles

from our high school. She has travelled to places where

it seems like I’ll never go--to France, over the moon,

between the two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms

in a water molecule, inside a heart.

She has the stamps on her passport to prove it.

 

We keep in touch. I write her novels for letters.

Sometimes I go weeks without hearing from her.

Then she’ll text me a phrase, or call in the early morning,

and we’re right back where we started.