To the Friend I Can’t See
By Kaitlin B. Curtice
Friend,
I’d like to get across that large divide that keeps us from each other —
this thing with keys and pictures of smiling yellow heads and red angry eyes.
I’d like to get you in an actual room with walls and windows,
maybe meet you in an open field or under the big oak tree
in my back yard.
I’d like to share a dream with you, and listen to your dreams, too.
I’d like to tell you how I got here,
and then let you tell me what it’s like inside your skin.
Friend,
I’d like to know how it got this way,
this back and forth tug-of-war over issues
that we’re only novices at understanding.
Maybe the first step is to admit it.
But instead, we read New York Times articles
and we slam our coffee on the table,
alone in our living room,
at the work cubicle,
fuming over that dumb-ass thing someone said yesterday
about our political party or worldview.
Instead, we rage against each other with exclamation points and
ALL CAPS so that our anger is understood.
But really, we’ve misunderstood each other completely.
Friend,
I need to sit with you and drink a cup of coffee
and have it all laid out on the table,
not so that I can come over to your side or you can come over to mine,
but so that our understanding can be seen in my eyes meeting with your eyes,
in a smile and a nod,
in a furrowing of the brow that indicates something is seriously wrong.
I need to shed tears with you because I feel broken,
and I need you to tell me where we’ve both gone wrong.
Friend,
My hands hurt because I spend so many hours typing to you and about you,
and I’m tired.
I want to sit with you under that oak tree,
or remember what the stars look like without all these cell phone glares and street lights.
I want to ask you to wrestle with me,
so that together we can fight to believe that our humanity on this earth
is meant to be shared,
and not divided up,
especially by technology-induced-PTSD.
Friend,
Take a look at your social media neighbor and consider
what it might mean to meet in human form again.
To listen again.
To create space again.
To write letters instead of typed emails again.
To remember again.
There is more to this world than our bickering and ranting,
more to these moments than our raving and attacking.
There is more to us than these screens and these accusations,
and our souls need us to remember.
The hawk is crying outside the window,
that hawk that has seen the world from the heights.
Maybe he begs us to begin again,
to stretch out our arms and work out all the things
that need to be worked out every day of our lives.
Maybe he asks us just to listen,
and in listening, to find each other in the midst of our own broken dreams.
Friend,
I’m willing to try.
Originally published at medium.com on April 7, 2017.
