Sit. Stay. Good girl.

Long story short: I had a best friend growing up. I mean best friend. We've known each other since we were born and did everything together. We were the odd couple. Cute little, Lynne and her sweet, innocent smile and matching personality. Me? Rude, crude tomboy with an in-your-face attitude and no regard for rules or authority. And yet we were each other's perfect match.

Inseparable. That is, until, we got to junior high.

"I can't be your friend anymore." She tells me at the lunch table in front of all my friends. "Kelly said I had to choose between the two of you. That I can't be best friends with both."

"Tell Kelly I said she can fuckin' blow it out her ass." I was such a pleasant 12 year old.


***************************

I ran into Lynne at a bar just a few days before her engagement party. "You're coming, right?" She seems to happy to see me. "I know that you wouldn't want to be in the wedding party. It's all boring girly stuff. I know you hate that stuff. But I really want you to be involved."

I start thinking to myself... Is she... doing me a favor? I can't tell.

"Write a poem for me."
"A what?"
"A poem! C'mon! You were always so good with words." Notice the 'were' she threw in there. She thinks I don't write anymore. That's how out of touch we've been. I guess she doesn't know that I wrote a novel, a few actually, and am finally attempting to get one of them published. Next weekend. [And I'm nowhere near ready.]
"What do you mean, 'a poem'? I'm no poet."
"Yea, but you're so good with words. C'mon, you've wrote poems before!"
"Yea, but I'm sure you want something about love and marriage, no?"
"Yea!"
"What makes you think I know anything about either one of those things?"
"I have faith in you. It'll be perfect. I just know it. And you'll read it at the wedding, right?"

She forgets that I've had horrible stage fright since... I was born.

"No way! I can't even promise that I'll be able to write anything."
"Well, we can talk about the reading thing later. Just promise me you'll do it. It would mean to much to Jimmy and me."

The poem is for the wedding but she wants it by the engagement party. So she can read it and make changes no doubt.

Geeeeeeeeeehhhhhh.

So here I am. Three days before the engagement party attempting to write a poem-on demand-about love for someone I hardly even know anymore. I couldn't even write a poem about love for myself.




...As if I don't have enough shit on my plate.