sandpaper skin

this is about a friend. the older i get the more i understand that friendship is hard. being a good friend, saying the right thing. you have to learn how to be yourself, define yourself by other people. standing in front of the chalkboard in elementary school, your shoulders pushed back and tracing collections of chalk dust on your scapulas, your hips pushed back into the ledge and your palms sweaty. not everyone can be a good friend all the time.
monica, she stands up at the chalkboard and she can’t get over it. she can’t see past the smoke and ash. my friend, she’s tiny bird bones and sugar cubes, she’s breakable. but she’s a liar, and she’s destructive. the words that come out of her mouth, i take them with salt and pretend that I’m okay even if I’m not.
but i did it. i pushed through walls that were bricked up and violent. waded through thick, dark mud that clung to my legs and threatened to pull me down, pull me down through a curtain of golden wool strung between dark green trees in a wood that is blackened and smoky, into a place of permanent night where tea cups fall like precipitation, smashing their tiny china bones in crusty bird's nests and the hollow places in trees and lay scattered jagged and delicate through the dewy grass.
why can't she, why can't she stop walk walk walking through that dirty sticky mud, leave a trail of selfish though our lives, glass and pure white sand, sickening pink champagne spilling over the walls and trickling in puddles and pools on the ground. you can't do that, you can't do that to people you like, you need to get a grip, grope, grasp on consequences, push all of those heavy laden cartons and boxes tied with string into an old baby carriage, and push push that baby carriage down a hill. let it go, let go and lick honeyed waxy candies from your pockets and stop taking out your tragedy on your friends.
i wish she would be a graceful loser. I wish she hadn’t gotten caught up in some sort of cycle of personal tragedy. I think that I don’t know how to be a good friend to her.
monica, she’s beautiful. and when she wants something she gets it. monica digs herself into everyone’s arms, leaving lasting indentations in the skin. people don’t forget monica, she doesn’t let them. she presses herself against them, asks questions and gets involved. she is everyone’s friend, she works so hard, she works herself so hard..
when i look at her i see her sandpaper skin: thin and vulnerable, her brittle bones but also her bold questions and focused eyes – she doesn’t look away, she never looks away. but she doesn’t look brave, she looks lost.
monica and i, we have had our battles. i don’t know how to feel, i don’t want to feel sorry for her anymore. her desperate eyes and her pretty china doll mouth. i don’t know if i want the responsibility of being close to her. her fragileness, her uncertainty, they hurt me too because I say things, my wavering voice and my own uncertainty and they smash into her and I don’t even know.

she knows what she doesn’t want to keep, but past that – after leaping from the third cement step all the way down to the sidewalk, ankles curving to steady the foot, she had landed, brittle bones intact – she doesn’t know what to do.