Friendship, Glue, and Popsicle Sticks

In sixth grade we built
tiny houses out of popsicle sticks
and glue that dried
cloudy on our fingers.
Kat always made hers straight,
windows level, roofs that held.
Mine leaned,
walls like crooked teeth,
but she said they had
character.

We spent hours after school
with cardboard and scissors,
planning whole cities —
bridges, signs,
little paper gardens.
She let me name the streets.

Then That Thing happened —
the Terrible Thing.
And I stopped talking,
stopped building.
The glue dried up in the bottle.

Friends drifted away
like balloons let go.
Some didn't know,
and were too scared to ask;
others just stopped
coming around.

But Kat stayed.

She sat with me,
while I wrote poems
and crumpled them up
without reading them.
She never asked me
to be the same.
Didn't pretend
not to notice
how I flinched
at everything.

I forgot who I was
for a while.
But she never left.

Now, we drive past
neighborhoods with
perfect little porches,
and she reminds me
about those popsicle stick
houses we used to build.

And I come unglued.

She still holds me together,
like she's trying
to keep
a house
from falling.