brenda and i were best girlfriends
for life,
and this was all decided
in the first summer month
of our tenth year
i used to sleep over
at brenda’s house all the time;
she was odd and fun—
not odd in a queer or
circus sideshow kind of way
(but that would have been just fine, too),
--odd in the way that, even at age ten,
she didn’t give a shit about convention
when most girls our age
were either working on the next badge
or making bookmarks in vacation bible school,
we were late night ghost talkers,
warm under stars,
fingers on a ouji and
wrapped in smurf sleeping bags;
we swore we received
fashion tips from monroe,
although we never really
paid too much attention to them
brenda used to say that
artists are freaks, and
that’s why she liked me,
particularly my mom,
because she didn’t get pissed
at her when she practically
strangled herself in some macramé owl wall hanging,
or broke her clay pottery while
pogosticking all over our house
(brenda said that if it was her mom,
she would have had ass-welts
before she could say boo)
even after the catastrophes that
make up the day of two ten year olds,
we still camped out in the backyard,
watched lightning bugs dance against
a scrim of fog and moonshadows,
ghost-talked and caught a few glowy insects
in a skippy jar
i ponder where
the bestgirlfriendship of a ten year old goes
after the many first months
of summer have passed;
i think of brenda often and
wonder if she still converses with saints—
i can only hope she remembers me,
and will put a good word in
every now and then
Adding your comment:
lovely write!
). I usually read it first by reading through the line breaks - I want to get a sense of the narrative or of the meaning of each full thought. Then, a second reading looks at the line breaks and seeks the purpose for the breaks - i.e. what extra meaning is given to this phrase set by itself on a single line, how does the piece work when read line-by-line as compared to the first reading; how well does each line work on its own? This is usually where, I think, the reader will find more layers of meaning, the depth of the piece.
