Minor Spider Unrest

Friday night I punched my best friend in the face.

There are lots of awkward things that happen during the course of a day. When I see Luke's back in a revolving-chair facing a computer, I know its him, and I know that he is probably reading the news. I just know and I start to fill up, with what, I do not know, but it begins at my toes, and I feel it in my belly, and my head swims. Algae, sea-turtles, Jerry in his fish-tank by the window where I sleep each night.

Then I hit my head. Not just then, but I few moments after, when he is saying goodbye to me in the student union. I swung around, my hand on the door nob, and banged my head against the hollow aluminum frame of the Student Activities Office.

I go dizzy, and it is Friday night. I'm in a tenement building on the corner of Pawtucket and School Street, where cars honk at one another, no matter the time of day, and I am crying, sitting there holding my knees in the stairwell. I am crying because I did not get to finish the conversation with the Luke. My eyes are puffy...pathetic. The door is locked. It's locked.

But he had thrown me on the spot, into a place where I had the upper hand because I had not yet assessed my feelings, where I had been crass to protect myself against everything everyone had told me. You are going to get hurt.

Okay fine, I'm ready.
(I'd love to waste some time with you)

But even as I walked down Walker Street, next to a young neighborhood boy, who knew not off me, or could here my sobs through his headphones, I knew what I would have said, and I was glad to not say it.

Then I was in the faculty parking lot, screaming at the top of my lungs at Tom: leave me alone. I threw my fists at him.
I miss grocery shopping with my mom
One to his stomach
I miss driving to Augusta with my father
One to his chest
I miss reading Calvin and Hobbes in bed with my brother
And one to his face.

I saw him hold his face in his hands as he fell behind and I hated him. I hated him for not letting me go, I hated Luke for not being there for me when I needed him. I hated...

...our legs, tangled up in one another, roaring with laughter. Probably holding hands, but not really noticing. I still mean what I said last night. I would probably have too, if I had been given the chance to say it.