I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

The big friend love that lives in the small moments.

Welcome to Found Poetry Fridays, a series of prompts and practices to move you towards the poetry waiting to be found in your world. If you are enjoying my Substack and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee.

To begin, I have an exciting announcement to share - I was selected to be an alumni workshop host for Unfold this month! My workshop is titled Alt Love Poems, and will be Sunday, April 21 from 7-9 p.m. CDT. We’ll write love poems for our loved ones who aren’t our primary romantic partner. You can still register for a month membership, or the price to drop-in for my workshop is $20.

I was already planning a workshop and accompanying newsletter about friendship, but am feeling particularly tender about it this week. My mom’s best friend passed away on Monday morning. When you hear that sentence, you are likely not imagining a tattooed biker with both hair and heart made of gold, but that’s who Neal was. It was one of those relationships that transcends the bounds of what we expect family to mean.

Neal eating fresh pie on the front porch. He likely complained that I didn’t add enough sugar to the whipped cream.

I had no legal or blood relation to Neal, despite being known as his #1 friend in a decades-long inside joke. Still, when the windows on my car were stuck down when I was in high school he used duct tape (his preferred tool despite being a craftsman) with such skill that they stayed up for me to drive across the state before I could pay to get them fixed. I spent a college spring break helping him re-tile my mother’s bathroom, and he did a beautiful job even if he accidentally froze all of her kitchen utensils in some quick-dry cement along the way. Last year when his health began to decline, my mom and sister went to visit him - they mowed his overgrown yard and hung art on the walls of his home for him to enjoy. He and my mom took care of each other, and when she moved away to be near her daughters they talked on the phone every day. I view these practical exchanges of care as profound acts of intimacy.

I recently learned that the phrase “blood is thicker than water” is shortened from the original, which says “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” The original says precisely the opposite of our current understanding, and is also reflective of how Neal loved his friends and family in equal measure.

The most moving example: Neal brought into our lives our beloved Thomas, who is like a brother to me and was like a son to Neal.  I learned this week that every time Neal hung up the phone with Thomas, he said “I love ya, buddy.” I told Thomas on Monday night that he was the legacy Neal was proudest of, and Thomas said “Oh, don’t I know it! He never let me forget.” Let’s write love poems for this week, and make sure our people are as sure of our love as Thomas is of Neal’s. 

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I am still too fresh with grief to finish the Neal poem I tried to write this week. Here’s a poem I wrote for my friends last year instead. If you draft a poem from the prompts this week, I would love to read them in the comments!

Re: the wild inadequacy of the word “platonic”

I wait for you as you crouch to the small wonder
of fungi, your fingerprints summoning puffs of magic. 
You wait for me, ready with your “yes” and 
a Tiktok algorithm that reads dreams for me from your screen 
taps. We are a tandem bicycle of forgotten passports
and found fruit, sparking our heads together to find our way 
home. The first time I saw you was an unbridled shout
of recognition, a flare that told me all I know 

now. There’s one harmony through every song 
cast by the supernova: your worries finding mine. 
When the world shuttered over everything 
good you found stars to hang above our head 
so we could finally rest. Your voice notes are my radio, 
the music of your mundane filling my ears until you appear 
outside the train station. You demand I make your day 
sad with my news and I try to answer your shattering 

text with every word in my glossary. Our permanence 
was bound by the fleeting: buckets of ice cream melted 
down our throats, a garden of flowers passed between 
our doorsteps, something I'll never remember 
grabbing you from the pharmacy, all the cardboard boxes 
you carried for me. Last night on the three-way call she sang
us a jingle about how we may not love God anymore 
but oh, how I still have love for you.

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Practices: 

Venmo a friend $5 for a surprise coffee this week. This is one of my favorite little acts of love.

I have a list in my Notes app of moments I felt particularly loved by others. Nothing fills me up like referring back to that list. An example I would’ve otherwise forgotten: Last January I woke to a text from my friend in Australia wishing me a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”….exactly one month early. She was so excited!

Spend some time journaling about moments you felt connected to your loved ones.

Tell a friend you love them, simple as that.

Prompts: 

Write a tribute to someone who didn’t “have to” love you, but chose to anyways.

Write a poem, as I did, that is a collage of moments with all of your friends and loved ones.

Write for a friend going through a hard time. Include the hopes you hold for them even if they aren’t able to hold them for themselves.

Write a piece that uses a practical act of love from a friend as a jumping off point.

Write a poem about a loved one that talks about traits you admire and why you’re impressed with or proud of them.

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Community Citations:

• My sister Katelyn wrote an obituary for Neal that beautifully illustrates the many facets of his vibrant personality and life. She captured much that I was not able to touch on here.

• Saffron Morter-Laing
  did a phenomenal amount of work over at
  Anthropocene Times
  to create a Poetic Library of all the poetry-focused newsletters on Substack.
  Ana Wang
  also made a similar list. Check both out, and send thanks to Saffron and Ana!

• Continuing last week’s list of NaPoWriMo recs, another excellent source for prompts is

  Maria Giesbrecht
  , who is posting daily prompts over on her Instagram.