your childhood dog

i wrote this poem abt my bestfriend some years ago bc i wanted 2 write abt how i didn't need love, i just needed friendz (i was sooo lonely). this friend has been such a constant positive presence in my life and 4 that, i am beyond gr8ful. I've decided 2 gift them this poem (despite the fact that it is kinda shit bc its so old XD) bc they've been so kind 2 me these past few weeks and reminded me how much i fucking love them!!!!!1 so this one is a love letter to a dear friend. enjoy!

Your Childhood Dog

A love like a wax seal on a letter: 

Indelible, carefully placed pieces of soul

A love just as personal

But not all-encompassing or opaque,

Some lighter love, one more freely given,

Is the love I seek.

I see it in all of life’s patient moments:

Windshield wipers, pairs of cherries,

Sighs into phone receivers

Dialled with aggravated fingers searching for comfort

In someone else who knows just how to be irate,

“And God! Could you just believe…”

That someone so understanding exists with you?

Not someone to go home to

But someone to cry on and share secrets,

Unpeeling one another like an orange,

Leaving sticky, sweet memory on greedy hands

To taste the sweet comfort of Summer on our tongues.

Even a love that rots just as quickly

I would still desire

For to connect with another soul;

Lunch dates, late nights, Thursday afternoons,

Regards that human importance, that need

To reference yesterdays and to live in memories.

A love that is quantified in time spent.

I need a love without words.

A love of pleasant daydreams,

Silently drifting off in each other’s company,

Meeting your eyes only to look away

Not out of shyness or shame,

But simply because our time is limited

And we need not for such trivial things.

Oh, but such trivial things:

Birthdays, excited smiles, saving the last song on the record just for me,

Is the exact kind of love I desire.

I need someone to look at me,

Someone to attend my funeral,

And someone to remind me of my manners, too. 

And I could make closeness my payment, our intimacy, our newfound right,

Our fair exchange of secrets and private jokes held in whispering hands.

In review, I think I find this love

As a budding, growing thing,

Evolving into something alive that I can hold

To fight off my darkness with its light.

So, thank you for the bridges we built.

Thank you for letting me meet your childhood dog

Because this love I so desperately seek,

I think will find me in our memories.

∾