FRIENDSHIPS....

Someone to gurgle at after a good breastfeeding. To share diaper rash sighs with and tell of your frustration at the man who always interrupts when the feeding machine woman is pledging her allegiance and love.

Someone to kick when no-one is looking and then start screaming at the top of your lungs and to make eyes at when the big humans come and spank his butt for making the cherubic angelic beauty cry. The first strains of friendship. The imbalance begins.

Then language developed and with it locomotory skills and the one who trusts you enough to put his hand to the fire because you assured it would not burn, forgetting that you both gasped at the wonder of what fire looked like. 

Who ran to hide when the big humans came and found you covered in palmoil because she said it looked like what her mum paints her lips in and decided to paint you in it. You stood still cos the feel of her hands on your body was delicious. The imbalance persists.

The one to whom you ran when you discovered body parts are different, wanting to see, compare. Whoa! This is huge, this difference. But you ambled over it as all the other things. 

You held hands shyly, endured the teasing and the taunts. You kept your confusion under wraps. This one is for your life journey. You can endure anything if she says you should. You share a history.

The tears. You don’t understand the tears. Why is she crying because the gangly boy said something you say to her all the time to her? What betrayal is this? 

She is growing in places you are afraid to look at. You want to hold her waist like before but it is causing you problems at night and at dawn. 

She giggles a whole lot and gets mad at things you are not even certain you did but you nod, mostly. Now, its chemistry.

She is no longer child. No doubt about that but she’s all yours again. Sharing confidences, asking how this or that looks and laughing, falling all over you. Blissfully unaware of how she looks, smells and feels so good and how much of a struggle it is not to taste, just a taste to serve as a reminder of what she tasted like when your kisses were innocent, a mere discovery. 

She’s your meter rule, the one against whom all the others lack a certain something. The only something you want. Up, on the pedestal she goes.

She betrays you again. She falls in love. For real this time. And even though you want to hate him, you agree, he is perfect, for her. 

Admitting that is more pain than breaking your leg falling down the stairs. That time you pretended to be fine till she looked at you and you wanted to break the other leg so she would do it again. 

How could she?! The ring burns a hole in your pocket, the size of hole it had burnt in your savings account. Friendship is what you share. Love is what you crave. Imbalance returns.

You want intimacy, more than anything. You crave friendship, you search and replace it with several things. Assured of your ability to cope. You find, mould, cast aside and repeat the process many times. Hearts and lives strewn across the timeline of your ultimate search.

You convince yourself it is you, not them and you’re right. What you seek is available but it is constantly evolving.

You hear her voice, like from across the ocean…..’can you talk?!’ And your world is okay again. 

Your friendship survived her love for him. She needs you again. You hold her tight, kiss her right and she looks up at you with scared eyes. 

The friendship you crave is here. 

Always will be.

And your full measure of luck and love….