For Madeleine
By George Abraham
To the girl I danced with at freshman year homecoming,
I apologize for stepping on your feet.
As if our dance wasn’t already awkward enough,
My lack of coordination didn’t go well
With the fact that you were barefoot, and I had wooden loafers on;
So I apologize for any bruises I may have left that night;
Maybe this was the reason you didn’t dance with me again
Until the time I decided to step on your feet at senior prom;
I’d like to say I improved my dancing over the course of
4 years of attending sweaty, cramped, orgy-like high-school dances,
but that would be an understatement-
perhaps the only thing joining the step team did to me
was help me learn to step on your feet more elegantly…
To the girl who sends me random snapchats of her cat,
I swear you’re not a crazy cat lady.
Yet.
And sadly enough, you’re not my only friend who
Snapchats me pictures of their cats;
In a digital world where exchanging perverted images can be done with the swipe of a finger,
It’s nice to have friends who sends me pictures of cute animals every now and then;
To the girl who got an awkward tanline when she crossed 2 bandages over her freshly-done bellybutton piercing before we went to the beach,
I think that outline of a cross on your stomach was the closest thing you ever got to a baptism.
And no, I don’t apologize for not warning you when the tide washed upshore
And got your whole torso soaked;
Sorry, that was for the time you gave me an awkward nickname,
And embarrassed me in front of everyone at a football game;
We have a healthily unhealthy back-and-forth, at-each-others-throats relationship,
If I had to give you a spirit animal, it’d probably be a barracuda
To the girl who invited everyone to her house to jump on her wet trampoline after a day at the beach,
It still angers me that your deep-fryer broke just when we started making wings.
But that movie you wanted to watch about flesh eating bacteria really made me lose my appetite anyways;
Those were good times-
That week before everyone went their separate ways for college,
And all we could do was kill the time we’d look back and cherish one day…
Because beneath the hookah-smoke-leaking smiles, and grains of sand and shell fragments that littered our car floors,
Beneath the white lie excuses we’d give to our parents, and the nights that ended when the moon consumed our eyelids,
There was us.
And we were happy.
To the girl I danced with at freshman year homecoming,
I don’t know why it took us till senior year to become friends.
Maybe it was because my dancing turned you off,
Or maybe it was because we both needed time to come out of our shells;
Whatever the case may be, I apologize for any bruises I may have left-
That night, or any other;
Because being that pair of friends who fights every day can get exhausting;
I never thought I’d look back on my battle scars and smile,
And all I can say is, being your friend has been
The best boxing match I’ve ever fought.
I hear you may be going camping with us when I come back for winter break.
I guess that means round 2 commences….
Now.
Copyright 2013| George Abraham
