Women Friends

Are so much easier to find when you can pass

them notes in the hallway about boys you’re

obsessing over, and when sleepovers are

commonplace for lady bonding. But as they marry

and move away, you are forced to cry into a cell phone

on your hardest days, instead of cuddling on the

couch, intermittently berating your boyfriends between

commercials of The Hills.

In the longing void of their presence, you find

loneliness deeper than any from a man. An ache

of kinship still alive from afar; asking you to nurture

it, as your arms long to hold the newborn resting

on his mother in an alternate time zone. Offering

anecdotes via meme way passed midnight. Little

reminders that love isn’t lost with girlish innocence.

Then one day, by chance, you meet another and you

watch as she tends to her son in a way you recognize.

You'll never know fully the things that shaped her as a

girl — those slumber party times have passed. But you

eat together and realize that it’s never too late to ask

for belonging. Like coats, collected through the years,

they keep us warm on days we need them most.