sometime early on

Note: Ruthenium Fruit Bat, this is what happens when you “joke” that you only check the blog to see if you’re on it. Then I write sappy #@%$&* like this. Sigh. ~acb

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There is a silence that grows around friendships as they go on. There are some things that do not need to be said anymore. We don’t need to remember how we met. Sometime early on, I suppose. Trying to find our way around this strange new place, ‘college’, what does it mean. Somewhere in between classes, before dinner, going up the stairwell, in the laundry-room. And now we all drift in for dinner at the same time, the same table in the dining hall, the same thermoses cluttering around the discarded napkins and scarfs laid aside. We do not need to speak. We know each other already.

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When all has been at a loss, when there was no home in me, they were there. Six young women who profess that they loathe all others, alone but not lonely, absorbed in science and singing, history and the humor they cannot seem to shake. That steal pumpkins. That drive to Iowa late in the night and come home in the morning. That casually speak of pentagrams and go to church. That make powerpoints, complete with graphs, to explain their emotions. That are so gentle and upturn tables when their homework is too frustrating. That re-read books until the spines break. That raise their eyebrows. That dead-pan. That know what the others will say before they say it. That force each other to sleep when they need it. That take away the coffee when their hands start to shake. That do not look away when I weep.

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I think of them when they are not near.

And they think of me when I am far away.

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We are lucky we are close now.

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© 2015 Anna-Christina Betekhtin, All Rights Reserved.