Claudia Ann Seaman Award
My never Friend
Lara Zeng
Belmont, Massachusetts
Belmont High School
Poetry
already, in the waning shine of this ephemeral season
i see the absences where they do not exist
now fattening
now so void where this stranger was once light.
i imagine that
her hologram shimmers in the
dusty corners.
they are stacked to her knees in pages
which rustle, gentle and silent, out our doorway.
her turned shoulder, a whisper by
her hair, the
hum of her laughter—
imperceptible
low and steady
—stumble silver down our stairwell.
lying awake now, i swill
my black and lonely theory
listen as her manners, eternally fading,
call me sweet
promise me a lamppost in a city i’ll live
wedge the year between us
into the perfect gap of her empty bed.
who is left now?
in this world i care too little to speak first
while the remnants share a sandwich, sign their names
in this world i watch from the top bunk
paralyzed in my skeleton
ankles trembling in their unemployment.
but awaking, i learn
no emptiness is meant for her, not this time, and
i do not repeat myself.
the years multiply
the trees turn
the remnants and i leave this room.
when she finally arrives through the doorway,
i return her wrinkled smile to her.
after all this time it
wasn't mine to save.
EDITORIAL PRAISE
As they liken the gradual fading of a relationship to the waxing and waning of the seasons, the speaker reveals the subtle, yet transformative nature of the only constant in life—change. This piece reveals the kind of invigorated grief that comes with suffering the loss of something that is still tangible, although emotionally aloof; physically accessible, but spiritually callous. The speaker is unapologetically raw in their description of what it means to lose, to learn, and, perhaps most importantly, to love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR