Like-Minded People
somehow i found you
and for some reason you answered
i guess we became friends
because we hated the same things
and really loved the things we did.
because i clicked “who to follow”
i didn’t know it at the time
but the boy with the girl name
was a lot like the girl with the catchy name
and we exchanged slang
beginning to fiend for blue blurb notifications
despite oceans and ethnicity
so every day for two years
from the time you woke up
5 hours ahead of me
you left me things to wake up to
and every night till 5 hours after you fell asleep
i did the same for you
the best part of my birthday was spent
with a package on my lap, and a hat.
a note from you
i loved seeing your bad hand writing
and now its home
on my wall
it doesn’t matter that our tongues
lay in different spots of our mouths
because we speak mostly with keyboards
it doesn’t matter that i speak
the bastard version
of your beautiful dialect.
and when i describe my best-friend
to bubble dwelling people
who’s world ends at city limits
the words
“thats different…”
cut like the Ripper’s blade
media gives us a bad name
we aren’t fish
and funny that “strangers"
knows each other best
like how you refuse to eat fish and chips
or how i don’t let you call them chips (they’re french fries)
a chuckle is as certain as the sun rise
but the bad times too
i turn to you
and vise versa
family and fights,
and barely decipherable drunken disclosure
like how your mom hates you
or how crayon on your walls
is the language of your brother
but your father only speaks turkish.
and how my sister is ill.
but we’re both scared.
consoling each other
through adolescence
or maybe it's into adulthood.
because even with your 6’4 advantage
we’re both buckling
and 18 is a speeding train
you tell me it’ll be okay
when i send undeserving boys my body
and then cry at my 21st century mistake
the song of a ringing cell phone
has become my promised lullaby
and your alarm.
the mirror is unkind,
but we've grown.
it is a different kind of hate
that we have for ourselves
still a monster,
you just got better at taming it.
but we both hate our friends.
so basking in the taunting light of my computer
will have to do.
we can deal with purple sunken eyes
and thin skin eyelids with visible veiny vascularity
from late last nights ignoring time zones and waxy sky dwelling cues
and sometimes the only reason i get up
is because of our plans,
of visas and apartments
not now, but we have faith
that one day
we’ll be with someone like us