Close your heavy eyes and picture for me, if you please,
The way your hair catches in the warm summer breeze,
The rose tint of your cheeks as if they are petals to breathe,
Your soft skin kin with the snow caps of the evergreen trees.

Your good, tired eyes so gentle and lush and strong forest full,
See a world so harsh, yet gaze upon it so steady, fierce and tactful.
Great lioness, with white teeth so sharp, prowl the preys so pitiful --
They cower in corners of deep darkness, dreaming of your downfall.

Open your easy emerald eyes and look as me, if you might,
To understand this is what I see so this is what I write:
Your charisma, your grace, your gentle laugh like a kite in flight,
Your electric vim, your vivid aura, your strive to force things right.

You’ve fire in your fathomless green eyes that challenges our sun,
You’re a phoenix, soaring through the sky like a bullet from a gun
Screaming   C O M E   A T   M E   at the top of your lungs.
How lucky am I to call you a friend, you strong and beautiful woman?

Friendship* is defined as *being friendly,
But somehow the word becomes something more:
An overt assertion; warm, open arms.

Little more than two syllables,
It carries a weight mightier
Than anything found on this Earth.

Endless laughs, countless tears,
Gossip and roaming thoughts,
One word holds so much love.

As cruel time shrinks,
As distance strains,
We grow stronger.

Friendship is defined,
By our words, as
*I love you,
My dear
Friend

You are that fire in the midst of a raging winter,
the first and single daffodil at the brink of spring,
a summer storm that breaks the hovering heat,
the last green leaf to fall with the slumbering oak.

Hope and clarity, like the single candle that starts a vigil
Light and sensitive, as if heaven’s rays concocted your body
Strong and beautiful, a comet that inspires and ignites
Lovely and fearless, the red sunrise after the darkest night.

My dearest friend, you are louder than any hurricane,
Mightier than any wind yet soft as a young rose petal.
Your back against my own, together facing the tides
Of tsunamis that should’ve destroyed us, but here we are.

Time is a fickle thing, it falls like a rock and flies like a feather.
Distance is a cruel creature, pulling and bridging the strains.
But you are so valued, so precious in my memory --
Like a swollen chapter with pages lined in platinum,

It would be a sin to forsake such a person as yourself.
If ever a moment of dysphoria befalls you, take comfort
In the memory and ever beating heart of our friendship:
Call me up, *****, ain’t no way you’re escaping me.

You are the enrapturing, encapturing, sunset I wish I couldn't remember,
the warming, warning, spring rays I wish never freckled my shoulders,
the beaming, beating, summer heat I wish hadn't seeped red on my entirety.

You are the shunning, stunning, sunrise I wish I couldn't see,
the scarred, sacred, autumn sun I wish didn't make me stronger,
the blight, light, winter sun I wish stayed hidden behind grey clouds.

My dear, you are the most bewitching chapter of my life,
the tear-soaked pillows and the bar-coded mascara face:
another heartbreak ready for the card-catalog among masses.