Chapter One,
She slips into the background, passive like a shadow
Impressive like a co-star, successive like a question mark
Then she’s in the back of their mind like a scene on rewind, waiting for the next time.
Chapter two,
She reappears like a bad dream that keeps everyone reeling but it’s not quite the same thing,
Because, she keeps them laughing, growing, and going, like she unlocked all the secrets to knowing,
So they keep around to bring all the dreamers back down so they can find answers now.
Chapter Three,
It’s hard to say how much time has passed since she joined the act but there’s no turning back,
She becomes the ground upon which everyone starts live, a foundation of sorts, present more and more,
And when the chapter ends they can expect her again because she’s the backbone upon which they all depends.
Chapter Four,
She needs them like she needs air because they’re always there, and she was scared
To let go of something so positive, someone so relative, and yet so uncooperative,
Long chats and meaningful talks, became silent tocks on the invisible clock,
Her time had begun to fade, but she felt the same, so she tries to stay.
Chapter Five,
Her chapter has but only one page left, and it is easy to guess, that they’ve already seen her best,
All of her smiles and all of her tears, they trusted her to bring them cheer, until she didn’t disappear,
Like everyone else, every devil from Hell, like every deadbeat friend who could never help,
But even good friendships die so they watch her collide with the inevitable,
Good-bye.
But the epilogue,
Is so much worse than the story, because there is no more glory, not in being cast aside,
Every single time,
She can’t be another passerby in someone else’s spotlight, not for the rest of her life,
So once the last page closed, she went home,
And the rest?
Nobody else will ever know.
From now on, her story is a secret,
A tragedy all her own.
A note from the author:
Whether you read this note, I cannot begin to guess. This poem is rooted in the idea that most friendships do not last forever, and the practice of lifelong friendship is dead. Instead, friendships are “passing fancies” that stay relevant as long as this season’s color or latest viral video. Friends instead are just chapters inside of the big story, and the narrator of this poem is telling the reality of one woman who has had a great number of friendships pan out the same way – almost as if it is a song on repeat with verses and a catchy chorus – but she always gets burned because her time with those friends is limited. The ending stanza “Nobody else will ever know,” is meant to show that when this woman’s last friendship comes to end that she’s going to stop seeking out camaraderie in others, while “From now on, her story is a secret, a tragedy all her own,” indicates that she’s miserable at the acceptance that what she wants is unattainable in this present state of affairs.
The practice of friendship is very surface level anymore, with social media allowing us to put our heart on our screen instead of our sleeve. Direct human connection is rarely in actual practice, and the whole crisis of it is incredibly underplayed. Not too long ago, there was a quiz that people could put up on Facebook – a “how much do you really know about me” type of thing – and I have some people on Facebook that I respect and admire but would never speak to in person. It was all over, and so I found those people that I would never speak to in person and I took their quizzes. It was a study, if you will, to see – how close do you really need to be to someone to know a lot about them. These people made their quizzes on their own, customized as they saw appropriate, so surely there would be barriers to my being able to pass their quizzes of intimate knowledge.
Alas, that was far from the truth. I took something like seven or eight of these quizzes, and I passed them all with 85% or higher, proving that my physically talking to someone played no role in my ability to be considered a true friend. The idea of that should be unsettling, but – is it? Friendship is incredibly weird in today’s social climate and this poem was a way to explore that patterned birth and death of friendships that people think are meaningful but fade away – just like a passing fancy.
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