ON FRIENDSHIP
You, in a hot pink tube dress.
You, with the ten thousand objectives.
You, whom I loved unreservedly.
You, who touched my face and called
through pouted lips, my dun skin porcelain.
Our girl-group’s Dean Moriarty.
Scheherazade of best nights ever.
I dreamed you in a bell jar filled with whiskey;
dreamed us old together, our long hair silver,
soft as eider, knit with promise rings.
You, whom I lost to the summer, to hands
moving under the table, where I couldn’t see them.
Would you believe me if I told you
from this distance you look
like a doomed, spare bird? Just like a bird.
I would have you affixed and illuminated,
framed inside a diorama of contented burden-beasts.
You, I would take to the movie of happiness.
I would tell you that warmth is not a cinematic treatment
but the grease-and-brine coat of ordinary living,
of multiple anniversaries, of sameness, and time.
Chelsea Whitton is an internationally published poet and essayist, currently based in Cincinnati, OH. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various print and online publications, including Sixth Finch, Cimarron Review, Bateau, Cream City Review, Poetry Ireland, Stand, Atlanta Review, Main Street Rag, Forklift Ohio, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She was a finalist in the 2018 Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, and her poem “Spear Side (Patrilineality)” won the 2018 Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize. A chapbook, Bear Trap, was published this year by Dancing Girl Press. Chelsea holds an MFA in poetry from The New School, and is a PhD student and Graduate Assistant at The University of Cincinnati.