Friendship Letter

A Poem

And if I could tell you how it has felt to miss you you would not even believe it/ you might even think, wow she’s nuts, she’s crazy, but friend, /when you were living in my phone I would light up all day not feeling alone, not feeling odd, not feeling so far away from everyone and everything, moving /from state to state to state to state/ and I, the only one to ever do this in my family, I, the only one to ever be over here, basically new, basically on my own, but not really,/this fish out of her water trying to understand how to swim in the high desert, trying to walk around and feel half normal, trying to make a marriage work, trying to raise a human, a girl, a young woman, /a feminist, in a culture where even feminism is anti-woman, even feminism is ‘do what men do, do what men want, like what toxic masculinity says to like, do what capitalism wants, objectify yourself, obectify everything, it’s liberating!’ -/ I can’t raise her like that, and I won’t, I won’t be like that, and I won’t even if no one let’s me in to the new “feminist” club anymore, /even if somehow being against women and people celebrating turning themselves and their bodies and their sex and their lives into consumer objects and commodified empty products and ego ego ego ego ego gets me “canceled” in today’s passed out “woke” world of “anything goes let’s never change a thing!” /and I know only you will understand, only you, raising your own girl, your own pre-teen, will get this, will see the toxic fumes that we call society/ and will have some ideas about how to craft breathing devices that are not perfect but that get the job done, that let us come up for some air now and again, that let us laugh and relax, for a bit, /you only you /understand the anxiety that is holidays and birthdays and any special event day known or unknown planned or unexpected you know how it feels to want and to have expectations and to have/ them dashed before the day begins simply because the reach of trauma’s arm is so extended that it knocks down anything good in the name of protection and sabotage/ in the name of it’ll be better if you just don’t experience this good thing because you know it will turn sour soon enough, /if you only knew how many days I wish I lived with you, that it was us and our girls, that we got by drama free for the rest of our days, with a cat or two, sure, and that all of our projects out there, all of the things we felt we had to do and be and all of the people we felt we had to cure and heal and help and fix it was just us, /us who screamed driving in San Fran because of the hills, /us who walked the floors of Art Museums to put our babies to peaceful cultured sleep, /us who learned from each other how to cook asparagus and how to fetch the nasty white slime out of the eggs before we scrambled them, /us who, separated by the miles and miles of space and land and people and junk and pain in this nation texted each other night and day to cope with life to manage life to be someone’s joy in life and in motherhood,/ you have no idea, just no idea how I have missed you and how unconditional my love is for you, /because I know what unconditional love feels like because of you, /even if we have never said a word, even if we never do, even if it takes years for us to meet again, /the depths of this life, the attachments, the healing, /so much of who I am and what made me survive is because of you, and you have no idea how much, as mentioned, how much I miss you and how much I know we would take this place/ and all of it’s traumas and all of it’s bombardments of disrespect and abuse, /we would take it, clean it up, and show our girls the strength and joy of women, lifting up women, / we, break chains, we, reframe liberation as it’s true nature — enlightenment, enlightenment, enlightenment.

Jenny Justice is a poet mom who longs to bring poetry to life in ways that spark empathy, connection, joy, and feeling. She loves writing love poems, climate change awareness poems, poems for kids, and of course, poems about poetry and poets. You can follow her on Medium and at Jenny Justice, Writer. You can support her on Patreon. You can follow her poetry at Justice Poetic.

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