losing a best friend

is like, as she said,
saying good bye to your dreams of the future,
of when you and I would get together over coffee
in the special space we created together,
the space that was only available between your lips and mine.
the space where we could bash and wonder at the rest of the world,
make snide remarks to counter their snide attitudes,
judge their stupidity for not understanding our stupidities,
repaint memories in tones that were gentler,
or more raucous,
discuss love poems and abortions
and sex we shouldn't have had,
drinks we shouldn't have had, nights that seemed superfluous to our characters,
yet kept happening, intrinsic to our rhythms.

sharing the knowledge, untouched, like a warm bear rug between us,
that we are badgirls, who didn't fit,
who found redemption in the eyes of each other.
that we were sometimes too smart
and always too naive,
to think that this would disappear, this love-space,
crumble under the weight,
of the wreckage we were wreaking.
under the weight of worldrules,
the regulations we rejected, that were there to protect us,
we who never needed protecting,
because we were protected by each other.

I broke the space, left it for help, help I needed,
betrayed our own rules,
which had grown so rigid and so brittle, they couldn't hold back the world,
that came crashing in, with its requests for rents and plans, for an accounting,
a ledger that had been imbalanced for so long

I chose the rules, the redemption of legitimacy.
and now I am here, pushed out of the space,
an outsider to be mocked and judged,
by the girls that wagged their tongues voraciously over coffee and cigarettes,
judged inadequate and stupid by the tribunal
I helped create.