A Love Poem For My Best Friend

You don’t get enough credit.

I pull bits and pieces of inspiration from all of the relations I’ve had
and string them together into various singular pieces,
a combination of the experiences I’ve had to create one summarized experience
for someone to read.

But you, you are the backbone to all of the experiences I’ve had.
You’ve been there for all of the good and all of the bad,
but I don’t nearly spend enough time composing literature about you.

You’ve been there on the nights that I tried to escape
life through bottles of tequila and bad conversations with men
who only tried to feed me more bad decisions,
and you’ve watched me dry heave my way through the next day,
praying that no one would notice the regret that was written all over me.

You’ve been there when I’ve concocted crazy business ideas,
and while you may have laughed at some of them,
you were always supportive of the insane amount of hours I work,
the weekends and holidays and significant events I wasn’t available for
because you always supported the desire I had to follow what I loved.

You’ve been there as I’ve made poor relationship choices
over and over and over and over and over,
and as I still continue to do this
(because I never learn, do I?),
you’ve spent night after night, listening to me banter on and
beat the words out of my mouth about the same person
until I rebound onto someone else,
and you don’t even judge me for that either.
You just laugh.

You’ve been there as I’ve hopped on and off planes,
as I’ve nearly died in other countries,
as I’ve had my heart broken in other countries,
as I’ve fallen in love in other countries,
and you endlessly listen to my adventures, without jealousy and without criticism
through Skype, through Viber, through WhatsApp, and every communication tool we find.
I don’t know how you can withstand this.

You’ve been there through my rude and arrogant phase,
when I wouldn’t listen to you tell me how bad he was for me,
how I shouldn’t go back to him,
the times you told me I was hurting myself for shutting others out,
the times you told me I should forgive my family,
the times you told me to be happy instead of consistently angry.
And through all of this, you are still by my side today.

You’ve been there as I’ve wrote love poems and hate poems
about no one in particular,
and even though you’ve questioned my writing, wondering if I still had
the same lingering thoughts about the people you’ve warned me about,

I really should have been writing love poems for you.

There is no one in the world that could love me as much as you do.
There is no one in the world that has been as close to the definition of love
as you have been.
And you must be crazy to love and support someone as insane as me,
because I wouldn’t last as long as you have with me,
and you’ve managed to weasel your way through years of friendship.

So thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I hope that one day, I can love you as much as you have loved me.