You have become my most familiar stranger,
and stranger still my most familiar friend.
Except that we may not speak without memory,
nor remember without speaking exception.
You look my way—ask after me—as if it mattered,
matted strands of friendship, lying, unexamined.
Do not touch me—that’s near enough to be—
or to be not, lest touching reminds, feels strange.
Disassemble me again with un-love, lay me out,
in all my parts for choosing not to reassemble me.
I don’t know what you have become, except
you remind me of a time I knew a stranger.
It seems stranger to see just part, excluded now,
excepted from friendship, not quite stranger enough.
Friendship, as progressive, is slipping backwards,
into a time before even the way I thought, was new.
Before the way I loved was lovely, coming as it did
from everything I am, before you knew the way I am.
In becoming familiar to myself, unfamiliar to you
you have become my most familiar, absent, friend.
2012 © Andie Davidson