"My Friend Tells Me She'll Never Write Another Poem"
by Courtney LeBlanc
and I immediately write one about her / because once we sat
in a hotel lobby with a bottle of champagne between us, passing
it back and forth by the neck, taking small sips because gulping
champagne bubbles up your nose / because she gave me a lipstick
called intrigue and every time I roll it over my lips I think of her
/ because she adopts dogs the way I buy books / because she can
bake bread and I always kill the yeast / because we both curse
in our poems and in our lives and when I first met her I knew
she was a forever friend / because she's read nearly every damn
poem I've written in the past five years / because I love her laugh
and her quiet poems / because this isn't the end of our friendship but
change is scary and even at 44 years old sometimes
it's hard to say that / because maybe she'll read this and write
her own poem / or maybe she won't / or maybe in three years
she'll fill an entire journal in a month because those goddamn words
have to get out / but even if she doesn't, I'll still be here / because
in a hotel lobby with a bottle of champagne between us, passing
it back and forth by the neck, taking small sips because gulping
champagne bubbles up your nose / because she gave me a lipstick
called intrigue and every time I roll it over my lips I think of her
/ because she adopts dogs the way I buy books / because she can
bake bread and I always kill the yeast / because we both curse
in our poems and in our lives and when I first met her I knew
she was a forever friend / because she's read nearly every damn
poem I've written in the past five years / because I love her laugh
and her quiet poems / because this isn't the end of our friendship but
change is scary and even at 44 years old sometimes
it's hard to say that / because maybe she'll read this and write
her own poem / or maybe she won't / or maybe in three years
she'll fill an entire journal in a month because those goddamn words
have to get out / but even if she doesn't, I'll still be here / because
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life; Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com.