This making new friends business is
hard.
Nerve-wracking even.
I’ve blundered through relationships in
the past,
and lost a few good ones, as well as
some not so good.
I thought I might have lost the knack
entirely:
the subtle, smooth, glamouring;
the sentences sung;
the harmonies hashed out with
vivacious aplomb;
sparkling in the early hours with a
glass of plonk;
telling the awkward truths and then
sleeping it off.
Waking at noon; hoarse, and good for
nothing.
I thought that maybe that had ended.
That never again would I stand
forehead to forehead in a mud-strewn
field, listening to The Libertines.
Or fix someone’s wedding gown, and
watch them make their vows, and find
another life, away from me.
Or love their children, and twirl them
around one hundred times in a row,
like a human helicopter blade.
But here I am exploring new friendships.
Here I am on a train to Piccadilly, with
the babbling hoard encroaching.
Trying to forge the foundations of
another faith.
Another shared idolatry.
Another blast of love.
Claire Sexton is a forty something Welsh writer who has previously been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Peeking Cat Poetry, The Stare’s Nest, and Light – a journal of photography and poetry. She often writes about her struggles with her mental health and loneliness.
Foxglove Journal 