My friends are a mess,
We are broken and scarred by the past and the world,
And the horrible, horrible thoughts that we think
When we think of ourselves.
We are queer, we are sad,
And the pain is so fierce that we should just be dead.
Yet we burn with disorganised love,
A cacophony of unsure affection.
A bond with no name, a bond with no box,
But we are cocooned, cosy and warm,
In an amorphous vessel shaped just for us,
It is here we exist when we feel that we fit.
Tumbleweed sleepy safe limbs on our caving-in couch,
A hand on a back, arms on shoulders, knee on a thigh.
In this it is clear that we love them so much,
And will love them so much, all for free.
Just needing them to be happy,
And to know without saying or questioning,
That we will remake their world,
One joy at a time.
Soothing voice on a midnight phone,
When life is too painful and savage to live.
We don’t need written vows to know,
That we are infinitely each other’s. Obviously.
Conversations are scattered,
Two hours on Sunday, then nothing for days,
Then 38 memes cascade through before bed,
38 “saw this and thought of you”s.
Tell me this isn’t the whollest of loves.
We don’t play by the rules,
Set by people and time.
They’ve never been kind, so no,
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much,
To a family chosen, adopted friends,
The platonic loves of my life.
We make sense of a world,
Will make sense of a world,
In which we make no sense at all.
Emily Aine is a recent physics graduate from the northwest of Ireland. She lives and works in Dublin, and loves spending time in nature, having late-night chats with her closest friends, and enjoying cosy evenings with her girlfriend (and occasionally her cat!). She has recently rediscovered her passion for writing and uses it to focus on joy, friendship, and seeing the beauty in the everyday.