A letter to my 5th grade self:

I know you are only sitting at the table 
in the cafeteria alone because your
best friend is ignoring you, and I know
that you want to talk to her so badly,
beg her to speak with you again, barter
for her love like you can somehow strike 
a bargain for friendship, but darling,
this is not how friendship works.

It will take you years to understand that
people leave and you have to let them go,
and sometimes they are here physically 
but gone emotionally: you need to know
the difference between someone holding
your hand and holding your heart, realize
some people weigh you down like anchors,
that the people who really love you will be
your sails and your sea, keeping you steady.

And I know this has happened more times 
than you can count, that just last year your
old best friend came to school crying, with
knots in her throat and daggers in her eyes,
saying she just couldn’t spend time with you
anymore, I know that in 2nd grade, the girl you
wrote songs and rode horses with pretended
she wasn’t having a birthday party but invited
everyone else she had said she didn’t like,
I know that she is now the head cheerleader
dating the captain of the cross country team
because she replaced your love for popularity,
and I know that all of these things hurt—
that too many people have replaced you,

I regret to inform you that the cycle of being
abandoned never stops, that people continue
to give up on you, trade loyalty for convenience
like there is no tomorrow, the hurt never quite
heals fully, but you are learning to love them
while you can, before they walk out the door,
before they deem you unbearable, before 
they give up on you, you are trying to see 
some silver lining, right now. And I promise—

Even though you struggle with respecting 
yourself enough to let go of the people you
can’t make love you, even though it has been
more than one million days since anyone has 
bothered to stay, even though you are still 
searching for a friend who will say “I love you”
like it is truly a promise and not a prop for a
one line monologue, right now, you are closer
than you have ever been to finding someone,
so please believe that someday things will be
better for the both of us in ways that we can
not even possibly imagine yet.