I miss my best friend.

FRIENDSHIP, SONNET #2
© 1996, Melissa Kress

We had a friendship pure and true,
A friendship time could never cease,
That in sad moments, could renew,
And bring to us release,
We had a friendship, you and I,
That was taken much for granted.
We thought that it would never die,
Much like the seed that we have planted.
And in such haste did we forget,
The love required to grow,
And at our feet it shall be set,
Drowning from feelings never shown.
Maybe we can save this seed before its time is through,
For I've never had a friendship, as the one i have with you.

Do you bet on the sure thing or the long shot?

Do you bet on the sure thing or the long shot?

I think I'm a gambler at heart. I've always placed my bets on the long shot, never the sure thing. That's fundamentally against who I am. However, today I find myself possibly being forced to take the sure thing, and possibly lose out on the long shot in the end. I'm not 100% sure I can do that.

I've always taken the long shot and many times it has paid off big and many times it has slapped me in the face. I'm not sure what to do, and I feel like I need to discuss it with someone, but I have no idea who to discuss it with.

I've been having a little trouble with decisions lately. I'm barely capable of choosing a toothpaste to buy. I keep second guessing myself when I've always trusted my instinct before. The last few major decisions I've made have ended anywhere from bad to horrific.

I suppose I'll make a stupid pro-con list and see how it all stacks up. Something tells me that's not going to help, but at this point, I'll seek guidance where it lies.

Yeah, that's why.

Two Cats

by Katha Pollitt

It's better to be a cat than to be a human.
Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty—
their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is
only a cat's way

of getting without fuss from one place to another—
but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a
saucer of milk for a declaration of passion
or the crook of your knees for

a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch,
you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes
awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention—
then slash! the stiletto

or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly
notice each other but find it somehow a comfort
sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.
Both these ideas

are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers
cast up by different storms on the same desert island
who manage to guard, despite the utter absence
of privacy, chocolate,

useful domestic articles, reading material,
their separate solitudes. They would not dream of
telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies,
or inventing a bookful

of coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have
frantically shredded our underwear into signal
flags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in
a desperate frenzy,

they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics
weighing the probable odds of the soul's immortality,
as if to say, if a ship should happen along we'll
be rescued. If not, not.



***I think this just about says it all.