to my ex-bests

she's scrawling with a strange determination,
pencil fisted in one kids hand, her tongue
stuck slightly out of the side of her cherry-bomb lips
she's got blue all 'round her eyes, 'cause she's all grown up now, baby
you remember this. your mothers talking about her,
the case of faces she dresses herself in 'cause baby,
she don't need clothes with all that on her lips
baby, she don't need you no more. this was your fault,
in actuality. your not-fat friend your NOT-fat friend, whose mother stood you
side by side and told her to become you. you have become something at her expense.
she cries in the bathtub. you remember this. she's clumsy and loud and
you HATE her for breaking your pony,
you love her for lying. you do
you stand up at the wrong times, roll over for anything else;
she makes you do these things because she can't do them herself and
AFTER HER YOU MUST USE EVERYONE YOU LOVE until you meet her
the different her, the one you will always kneel for not in respect but
fear, she can cut you down like nothing. you think she hates you.
you love her more than you've loved anything, more than your kid,
the girl with blue 'round her eyes this is the girl with nothing in her eyes but
god what is it? you've loved her since before you knew the word for it. this you know without a doubt.
WHERE IS YOUR SPINE? your backbone, baby, where'd it go?
people are allowed to hate you. you think about kissing her. it doesn't seem bad.
she won't look at you now, but the last time she loved you she was all in blue and
this is the true mourning, this was the eulogy of your year-long partisan affair:
her hands around your neck, her arms squeezing you like she wants you dead
BYE-BYE BABY.
this you remember above all else. the very smell of her when her hair
was still shaggy, her ankles her ankles her ankles- such pretty ankles.