Growing Apart
A poem about friendships through the years.
Growing up, the world hands us friendships,
And without much effort,
They blossom like tulips
Into bouts of laughter, words of consolation, and extravagant celebrations
In the most in-extravagant of places.
As it goes with the seasons,
Some wither and fresh ones bloom
In the seasons of our lives.
Eventually, fewer flowers spring from the ground.
Once, friendships emerged
From odd places like calculus classes
Or chance lunchroom seating arrangements.
Later, we make small talk with colleagues,
And tell strangers at bars that we love them,
And somehow, it feels different.
Some of the brightest, most effervescent flowers,
The trusted confidants painted in shining shades of cadmium and crimson,
Choose different paths, move to new cities, and find strange lovers,
Only to shrivel away in our gardens, often slowly enough
Not to notice it even happened at all.
Sitting in a cafe one afternoon,
It dawns on us that a tulip
That once burst with the zest of being
Now lies dead in our garden,
And life goes on.
As kids, we said we couldn’t pick our families,
But we could pick our friends.
When we disagreed with our moms and dads and brothers and sisters,
We reminded ourselves that they were given to us by a fluke of fate;
It was our friends that we chose ourselves.
And yet, all our friends came from the same places.
In grade school, our friends were our classmates and our neighbors.
In young adulthood, our friends were our roommates and coworkers.
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We didn’t pick our families,
We all agreed,
But did we pick our friends either?
Along the way, we make new friends
That reveal different colors of the kaleidoscope of ourselves.
With some, we know right away that they are kindred spirits.
They laugh when we laugh, understand what we understand, think what we think.
It’s a wonder that such people exist.
Others surprise us.
We mistrust them at first, are annoyed, and gossip about them.
Still, they grow on us, and join our ranks.
When we introduce our old friends to our new friends, it feels surreal.
How can these people exist in the same universe together?
Walter White shouldn’t be at an Italian deli in New Jersey.
He should be in New Mexico, up to no good.
We love our new friends,
But they don’t quite get us.
They don’t know where we came from.
Their parents drive nice cars and eat dinner together every night.
We wonder if they can see right through us.
But when we meet our old friends,
They don’t quite understand who we became either.
They missed the last few seasons of our lives
Where we earned degrees, had our hearts broken,
And faced the disappointments that come
With starting off your own.
We talk about this with our new friends,
Who reassure us,
And once they change jobs and move away,
They too fade.
And we are left with our memories,
The running reel of our lives,
And sit idly with them,
Trying to remember
And also to forget.
Originally published at https://shitstack.substack.com.
