eye of the storm
BY CHLOE LIN
our friend said she was like a tornado
but thinking about it now
you were the tornado
i stumbled blindly into your whirlwind
and kept spinning so fast in it
that i couldn’t stop and was powerless to leave
and even if i begged you to let me go
you wouldn’t have heard me
but every so often
i was suddenly released
into the eye of the storm
where everything was calm and
our friendship was good
but before i could even savour it
you threw me back into your tornado
and it was the same thing again
because you pinched me
when i asked you not to
you lightly punched me
in the stomach only to realize
(in awe)
that i had a flat-ish stomach
you didn’t always give me
space just to talk
and ignored me utterly and completely
you sometimes said hurtful things
ignoring my reaction and then my existence
but you also sat with me
at recess and lunch
our backs pressed together
as you drew and i wrote
you loved some of my story ideas
and the way certain words
looked in my cursive
do it again you’d say
write it on the inside cover of my sketchbook
and then you’d admire it
like you had never seen cursive writing before
and i was always admiring you
for your courage and your intelligence
how you were so incessantly impatient
making things right when they were wrong
when i was to scared to do anything
yet simultaneously soft-spoken with
the special needs student in our class
the way your art looked and the fire
that burned constantly in you
how you were always honest
and didn’t care about other people’s opinions
i haven’t seen you or talked to you
in so long that i’ve almost forgotten
what our friendship was like
and whether it was good or bad
or somewhere inbetween
in the grey area that defined
almost all of my elementary school friendships
and i’ve forgotten how much you’ve hurt me
and if you even did at all
because my memory is quite good
at concealing the things i don’t want to remember
and hiding the details so i forget
but if you squint hard enough
you’ll see the cracks and fractures you left me
i’ve escaped your tornado now
your whirlwind of anger and uncertainty
your calm eye of the storm
that never seemed to last long enough
but knowing me
i could be caught up in it
just as fast as i fell the first time