I Am Really Looking Forward to Seeing My Friends in Seattle

Girl-Friends
When we discovered candles
we were teenagers
and just beginning
to play with the fire
of our bodies.

We spoke about it only
tentatively, unable to be anything
but mostly honest about the
boyfriends, those we thought
we might love, and the ones we
merely tolerated, those who
wanted us to be something else,
dressing us up like dolls, drawing us
into their older world, and away
from each other. We talked about
how we resisted or let them
and when we even
enjoyed it.

We sat and talked at cafes that
hated us, because we were so young
and had no money to tip the waitresses
and made a mess of spilled water
and ashes, cellophane wrappers,
and emptied plastic creamer containers
that we strewed about the tables
or stacked one inside the other.

We were altogether unhappily
awkward, with the bangs that
wouldn't grow out or that awful
color, and no one knew us
like we thought we knew each other
our lives burning up so fast
inside us like wild fire.

We complained about our parents
who restricted us, when we were
just dying for that hot
dangerous freedom.

We talked about school,
those days of occasional interest
but largely languid boredom
and what we did last weekend
how we went to to this or that
party or how we missed it, because
of bad directions or wrong address
and the evening was frustrated,
wasted.

But we still had those satisfying
soft summer nights when
we snuck out to meet each other
and there was such a feeling
of uneasy abandon
as we got defiantly drunk
or stoned and were happy
just to be out and together
laughing and forgetting.

We were unsure and temperamental
but rarely fickle or callous with
each other, because this was all we had
in the whole world: the fiery encounters
between our bodies and our boyfriends,
the long, slow school days and our caffeinated
conversation afterward, the sun setting over
far-away mountains on summer evenings
and the immense prospect of our
unimaginable lives before us.

A great song by Natalie Merchant, about being that young -
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nataliemerchant/tellyourself.html