Young girls on the bus compare knives.
New friends bonded by
The race to beat the school bell
And their parents.
One has blue hair,
The other, diamond earrings.

I hear them tell stories,
Diamond Earrings says she doesn’t have friends right now.
She did,
Until they all smoked a little too much ****
And another girl passed out.
Everyone runs,
Everyone except Diamond Earrings,
Who calls the cops and waits with the girl.
“I wanted to cry” she says to Blue Hair.
“I felt like a wimp”.

Sharing her fear,
Blue Hair insists that she isn’t weird.
“Anyone with a soul would want to cry”.
And I can tell that Diamond Earrings maybe hasn’t
Been told this for a long time.

They move on as quickly as the speeding bus.
And now they trade stories about the old men
That they recognize.
They loudly call them creeps,
Brave for each other.
Angry that they both have been touched
By strange men with gray hair on the bus.

I wish they didn’t have notes to compare.
And although it’s been years,
I still wonder about
Diamond Earrings and Blue Hair.