Friends and Acquaintances

I am not the greatest friend. I just like you and flounder at it until you get tired of me. At least, usually. Yesterday, I saw the Professor, and it made me so happy and sad all at once. I need to find a new way to be her friend, but the old way meant so much to me and sustained me in ways that I can’t put into words, but only miss. There’s nothing you can say about the person who just stops by to tell you about something funny that happened to her. Who loves your cats and will watch your dog. The every-day-ness of it.

And now there’s a continent between us.

I was still glad to see her.

I just finished TJ Jarrett’s books, which are every bit as good as Beth told me they’d be and then some more. She’s just an exquisite poet. It’s just breathtaking, poem after poem that is just perfect and overwhelming and… ugh… she lives right here. Somehow she’s able to do this kind of work right here.

I need to do something to up my game. I’m not sure what, but man.

And it’s weird, too, that I don’t know her. She knows Beth. She knows Jessamyn. That’s two entirely different worlds I’m a part of. She and I should be standing in the same small space of people who know both of those women and recognize each other in it.

But we don’t.