Have We Become Strangers?

annashanley Poems

I still think about those two ten year olds in the kitchen baking scones, in the flour-clouded haze of that early spring. Tucking in matching lanyards for our secret club. I still think about sitting in your boyish room and brushing blue chalk through wavy blond, while you showed me your favourite football cards. You'd exhale as a laugh, a defiant filly's huff. Lavender oil rubbed onto our narrow wrists beneath the orange bands. I still think about our sweet innocence. The laughter we made to deny our growing up. I still think about you when we pass by each other. Sometimes I smile. Often I don't. An indifferent glance. People don't believe me now when I say we were ever close as we were. A phantom lavender scent lingers at our confluence.