The Friend after Mary Oliver

The first friend

I ever made

would not talk,

quiet in a room

but boomed and thundered

at the burning

amazement of our friendship

until it died. Later

I recovered from my loss and separated

the old from the new

and forgot him. Now these memories

are out of me: out of my mind, my mind

is empty; we are no longer

inseparable, tangled together, certain to fall

back to how we use to be. Out of pain,

and pain, and more pain

we continue onto a new plot. We are forgotten

by the terrors of high school.