find the illustrated version here

Ode to friendship

words by Anneliz Marie Erese

all the small nights of your life you spent looking up to the sky
and sending photos to your friends saying, ‘have you seen the moon?’
all the feasts in a galley kitchen where you dance to old pop songs and feed
each other from a teaspoon. how familiar you are with their pink tongue this way,
the same way you know what rage they contain, what joy, who they kiss,
which stories they repeat over and over again. your cups are their cups,
your bed their bed, their body the only body you touch without your heart breaking.
food is stuck between their teeth so you hold a mirror in front of their face,
the same face that beams at your shadow at their doorstep.
and you wonder which love you have begged for in your lifetime and whether
this is it, this intimate knowledge between you and them, how they reflect your best
and worst self back to you, how the want to excavate the mines of your life is reciprocal.
where every act is small and redemptive and the weaknesses you all lay down on the table
as a way of apology have, in years and years, become the tender spots you protect at all costs.
you cannot bear this kindness sometimes but this is what love does to you –
when you have hair full of greys, you only want to be on a rusty metal chair
in an overgrown yard sitting around a fire, telling the same stories with your old,
old friends and realise that all this time, you have been carrying on with a life worth living.