My Dear Friend

by E.J. Fawn

Woman pulling a strand of her curly hair in front of her face

A girl stands before me, donning a cobalt-colored dress. She turns to me silently, eclipsed in the typhoon of sundry blues, “Does this look good?” She asks me, hair fashioned in buns uneven. This girl is my friend, so frankly, I tell her no. The dress—we admire—has allure, but her hair is a nest of a mess.  Hickory-brown strands coiffed like a bird ensnared in the fowler, stuck—it’s a blight. I haven’t seen her in months but it’s like we’ve never left still together woven tightly, threaded in a timeless tapestry. “Do it like this.” I attempt a motion with my hands, a simple mime to ignite a spark in her mind. She catches my lure and refashions her hair, untamed it unravels, umber-colored spiraled and tangled, screws within a box. She ties it in a low bun unbothered by the snares and tears she’ll surely mend later. Then she smiles, her grin an echo of simpler times, freer days when we’d waste class away foolishly enraptured in shared humor misunderstood. “It looks good.” She gets in a car, by law she shouldn’t drive but she invites me in and I take the ride captured by the wiles of time, spent with her, my dear friend.

Category: Featured, Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student