Today's poem is by Denise Duhamel

Poem in Which I Serenade My Lost Friends
       

In a Sex and the City episode Charlotte says, "Maybe our girlfriends
are our soulmates..." But then in the lame And Just Like That, Samantha
is gone and new friends take her place. I feel betrayed
but then remember all the friends I've lost to my stupidity
or pride. In junior high I lost Nannette to Lisa because I obsessed
about a boy and Nannette was sick of me whining. I lost
Diane, tall lanky Diane, because I didn't think
she was cool enough. I lost two Linda's when I went off to college
and Ginny because of a sexual escapade that embarrassed us.
I couldn't tough it out with Hilda and help her
through her depression. Same with my New York roommate
who had a nervous breakdown, running into the street
leaving her temp job when two phones rang at once.
I couldn't handle it, she said, sitting at the foot of my bed
and as she talked nonstop into the night I felt myself plotting
a way to kick her out since I held the lease. I lost Chloe
who was furious when I married. She said I'd promised
I never would. And maybe I had? Some of my other friends
drifted away—one bitter that she never became famous
and another so famous she was too busy for me. Therapists say
people come in and out of our lives as we need them
and we come into theirs when they need us. So many
of my mother's friends died before she did—only Maggie and Glo
left to visit her in the nursing home. She befriended
her roommate Joan who played her music too loud
which reminded me of my college roommates, proximity
and forced intimacy. I lost my friend George who used to call me
after each Sex and the City episode long ago, before
the show was streaming or in reruns, when it was on Sunday nights
on HBO. He thought I was the most like Carrie
since I'm a writer and I guess he was right because here I am
writing about my friends. George has passed,
but I lost him before that—my fault—when I sided
with someone else and didn't hear him out.
Another friend passed—diabetes—and I still miss her freckles.
I lost a friend because I couldn't deal with her addiction.
I lost at least two more friends because of my big mouth—
advising them to divorce their husbands before both couples
reunited. I lost a friend during my own marriage,
when my then-husband turned me against her, and I was lucky
when she took me back after he left. Long ago I lost
a friend who slept with my boyfriend. I lost a boyfriend
who slept with another man and I could never get him back
as a friend. I lost weight when I ate Friendship cottage cheese
for lunch every day for a year. I lost a friend to bulimia.
Only two Sex and the City characters ever worried about weight—
and only then for one episode each. In the 2008 movie,
Samantha overeats rather than cheat on Smith. And Miranda
devours cake she pulls out of the trash and says
"Check me into the Betty Crocker Clinic."
Carrie and Charlotte rally around their struggling pals
and I wish I could rekindle all my lost friendships
in a primetime half hour, make a series of cameos
in each of their lives, or appear in quick flashbacks—
holding Marie's hair back as she puked in a driveway
or pinning Sarah's updo then helping adjust her veil.

Tweet
Copyright © 2024 Denise Duhamel All rights reserved
from Kestrel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission