Broken: An open letter to my friend by Susan Avila
Dear C–,
Yesterday you wrote me, said you’ve been busy,
and nothing more.
Making it seem like we had just been in touch
when in fact we hadn’t for quite some time.
Deliberately, on my part.
In your two sentences, you didn’t ask how I was doing.
My life without you is a sunny, July day high in the mountains, a soft breeze
redolent with alpine phlox and the sweet smell of summer grasses.
Bluebells and columbines dancing among the trees, the quick movement
of an unseen animal from the corner of the eye.
But the breeze picks up, cumulus clouds rising over
the mountain peaks, harbingers of the coming storm,
bringing a chill to the air.
I find that I suddenly am
another person: envious–not of your life, but what is
lacking in mine–discouraged because you are my only friend.
I wrote you once about my dreams, not telling you
what they were exactly, like a photograph of myself, but out of focus, in
black and white.
You wrote back about yours in vivid color and sharp detail, almost overexposed.
I could memorize in your words the small wrinkles and imperfections of your life,
hidden in an array of colors fit to challenge a rainbow.
Yesterday I surrendered. Raindrops have frozen to hail, wind has twisted to vortex,
flowers bent and closed, hoping to hide their delicate faces in the grass.
Waiting, at once wanting but weary.
