It's hard to describe, in just a few paragraphs, a friendship that grew over the course of two years from simple acquaintances to best friends. In spite of our differences, and they were many, we became almost inseparable. Rarely a day went by, and never a week, without spending intensive amounts of time together. Doing things that best friends do.

Angela lived with Charlie during much of that first two years, and I had been seeing Susan exclusively for over three years. No one understood our strange friendship, least of all us. But they accepted, because we gave them no choice. Angela and I were, well, Angela and I. We vowed to never let mere love come between our friendship with each other.

Imagine my horror when I realized I was, slowly and inexorably, falling in love with Angela. That was four years ago. And I think I knew, even then, that though the love each of us felt for others could never hurt us, the love we were finding for each other could only destroy something precious in our friendship.

Angela and I were friends of long standing. Best friends. In some ways, more than friends.

This poem talks about that friendship. It talks about what a very dear person meant to me and my life, and how knowing her forever changed me. And, yes, it also talks about the pain and fear and hope that are inevitable when friendship crosses that invisible line into love.

One of the things this web site has done for me is force me to explore the "why" behind many of my poems. Why, for example, are so very many of my poems about love?

First I went through a stage of bewilderment, quickly followed by frustration. Anger and bitterness came next, I think, with resentment weaving throughout the threads. And I mustn't forget the bouts of depression, nor the feelings of helplessness.

There were other stages, I'm sure, tied together by a hope that flamed just bright enough I couldn't stop trying, yet was never enough to cast the darker feelings into shadow. And after all those emotions had passed, I discovered there was yet one more.

Desperation…

Annette and I were separated so she could "find herself." It wouldn't take long, she said, though the days seemed interminable to me. A week passed. Then another.

Fifteen days after she moved in with her brother's family, leaving me alone, she phoned to say she wanted to see other men. Nothing serious, she promised. But she could hardly "find herself" sitting home every night.
At the time, I believed any answer I gave would be the wrong one. And the wrong one, I knew, would destroy us. Twenty years later, I know the truth.

My answer didn't destroy our marriage. The question did.

She claimed she left because she was losing her sense of self. There was only me, and us, and never her. Or so she said. It wasn't until later I discovered there was also him.

I remember feeling betrayed. She was the one woman I thought would never hurt me that way. And those feeling of betrayal grew, feeding on my anger and bitterness, until they were only a single step away from hate. I never took that final step. But it was close.

I had been writing since childhood, but it wasn't until my second marriage that I started seeing my work published on a national level. An article here, another one there, never for very much money. But it helped instill some small confidence. I started to believe I actually had something to say, and maybe even the skill to say it.

A few years passed. Then my wife, the woman most responsible for helping me find the courage to submit my work, decided our marriage wasn't enough for her. She left me. For another.

And I discovered that all the words I thought I knew, and all the skills I thought I had, weren't enough.

I believe that suicide and depression, when not medically induced, are the direct result of not having a Dream to propell you into tomorrow. Take away a person's Dreams, and you take away their life.

And when Annette left my life, I realized yet another Truth about Dreams. The 'little' Dreams most of us are raised to pursue really don't mean that much.

I think relationships built solely or largely on physical pleasure are wrong. Not for any moralistic reason, but rather because it's too likely someone will get hurt. I'm sure I have a biased viewpoint (and will receive lots of email telling me so), but I believe men and women have different reactions to such seemingly casual affairs. Women can enjoy sex and companionship for their own sake. Men, sad to say, fall in love.

This poem is about one such relationship in my life.

My first two years of college were spent studying Commercial Art, so maybe it's not surprising my mind would turn to such a familiar subject when my heart was breaking.