by Madison Whatley
I discovered the music video at home alone and you guys,
having been in Driftwood, surprised me at my door.
I offered you plates of spaghetti,
showed you this new song I liked,
but you told me the song sucked and so did my spaghetti.
I told my boyfriend—who knows nothing
about you—this story recently, and he sarcastically told me,
They sound like great friends. And, really, you kind of were,
I think. I don’t know what to make of the fragments
of relationships that are left, since half of this friend group has blocked me
and the other half occasionally send me weird shit,
like Zach, who texted, I love my girlfriend and I know you love your boyfriend,
but I can’t be around you without thinking about fucking you.
I had to laugh when I found out his girlfriend left his skeevy ass
in Indiana. That shit ain’t cute at 21.
Disney stuck it out longer than anyone but even she is drifting
away. She texted me on Christmas after missing each other
once again, I have so much to tell you, but why wouldn’t she just
call like she used to? Freshman year, she kept me on the phone
for hours talking about guys from all her dating apps,
and at night, she would call again, drunk:
I miss you; You’re my best friend. And I got a lot
of calls like that freshman year, like when Max and Kyreil
called me at midnight to ask, How are you?
clearly stoned, a week after Ky’s brother died. I wonder
why I stopped getting these calls. Someone at college suggested,
You seem very real, and I think you were too real for them,
which, I think, means I’m an asshole. It’s hard
to let go of these people who taught me how to longboard,
recite a sonnet, build a sturdy fort in the woods,
main Yoshi on Super Smash Bros, drive
on I-95, smoke a joint, drink a beer, skip class, flirt
with boys, and swim in the ocean at night in my underwear.
I used to think of myself as the guy staring blankly
into the camera in the “Your Graduation” video, but maybe I am
also the girl talking passionately to a deaf audience.
The ex who I think of when I hear the song now is not
the same ex I first connected to the song. I called this ex,
you-know-who, freshman year to explain why I broke up with him and couldn’t
be friends. He told me, Your voice is the same, but you are a
completely different person. He said this
like it was a bad thing.
