The Best Friend I Ever Had

The Best Friend I Ever Had

By Hector Vance

The best friend I ever had was the most intrusive, insulting person I ever met.

The best friend I ever had, had words like snakes- ten foot long boa constrictors that viciously wrapped themselves in and around their victim’s rib-cage, crushing the bones and leaving a crumpled mess of a man, sobbing and heaving in as much decent air as he could take.

The best friend I ever had, had a temper like you've never seen. He could break me down with his hate, spittle spewing from his mouth like the unorthodox screech of bloodthirsty hounds at first sight of the weak calf in a heard of four-hundred.

The best friend I ever had could play with my emotions like children’s active, little hands grabbling through mounds of sand; each finger like a hook, uprooting my insecurities, one grain at a time and ripping each one from the other. Moods like Anxiety. Embarrassment. Self-loathing.

The best friend I ever had hated the world, hated me, and, undoubtedly, he hated god.

I despised the best friend I ever had…

                                                                  For lots of the time.

He was a fifteen year old insomniac, with a love for life and an attitude that shined like the sun. He had friends like most people had insecurities and he surrounded himself with good people as actively as others built the walls.

He was kind of a snob

But I loved him anyway…

                                                                             For lots of the time.

                Through elementary, I was always alone- I was lost amongst thick jungle of creative thoughts, of soldiers, and characters and poetry. Trees protruded through the ground, growing tall and fast- me helplessly getting caught in them as I sauntered.

Always sauntered.

I never rushed to escape, never rushed to get back to the other children, because I was fine. I was fine getting tangled in my dreams, being swallowed up by great lakes of contempt, Introverted, love for myself.

I think I was so intertwined into the trees and the vines and the jungle as a whole that I forgot to peer just a little farther than edge of my woodland, simply to see that most people didn’t like forests.

The best friend I ever had loved them, though.

He was terrible and brutal to me, but he loved the jungle just as much as I did.

The best friend I ever had was the only person in the ENTIRE world who could criticize me, who could belittle me; and even though his words were the harshest, most destructive, most vile profanities; that ripped into me, shredding me into a billion pieces, and strewing me across the pavement, at least he understood me.

                The best friend I ever had, had words like snakes, but they weren’t lies spawned from the selfish greed of a man simply trying to prove a point

                The best friend I ever had, had a temper like bloodthirsty mutts, but in time he would forgive what others considered unpardonable. He would tell me, “Humans make mistakes. We’ll try again next time.”

                The best friend I ever had would play with my emotions, but who else’s were they to play with, when they were a complex equation, completely unsolvable by every mathematician, by every psychologist, by every man who had ever taken claim over the title doctor on the whole planet.

The best friend I ever had, knew sometimes the answer couldn’t come from the outside when both the equation and the storm were on the inside.

You ask me to be lyrical, I’ll do it.

You ask me to be original I’ll do it.

You ask me to throw my work amidst a sea of poets, done.

You ask me to follow the prompt, eh.

            You ask me to find my Paris, I’ll do it.

You ask me to hand out my work among hundreds of critics, I’ll do it.

You ask me to introduce myself

… done.

Introducing the best friend I've ever had.