No, not even friends
                  Tanner Ballengee

 

 

 

 

I was still thinking about you on that train in Thailand. I should have been thinking about my 

girlfriend, but I was thinking about you. I couldn’t get rid of it. I couldn’t get rid of you. Like 

cancer. I compared you to cancer. I’ve never had it, but I’ve heard it sucks. 

My brother is good at puzzles. He’s like the Rain Man of puzzles. But if I hear you refer to my 

brother as Rain Man, I’ll kick your ass. He likes puzzles. He also likes to be naked. It wouldn’t 

be unusual to come home late at night and see him at the bottom of the stairs completely naked 

putting a puzzle together on the floor. 

You’re not a whore. I’m a whore. I’m bad at comparisons. I’m bad at a lot of things. I hope 

fucking you wasn’t one of them. Being a boyfriend was one of them. 

Mark stole an embarrassing childhood photo of Tanner (not me), and Tanner stole it back. He 

threw it behind his parent’s refrigerator and said, There, it’s behind the fridge. You wanna get 

behind the fridge? The fridge weighs a ton. Mark leaned over and easily picked up the photo 

from behind the fridge and took it out to his car. Tanner’s dad followed him out and demanded 

for it back. 

Tori used to come over, and we’d text on our phones together. Sometimes we’d text each other 

in the same room. My mom bought me flannel sheets because the basement got cold in the 

winter, and I fucked Tori on them every other night that winter. After she broke up with me, I got 

a job at Home Depot. I hated working at Home Depot. I made it a point to steal at least one item 

every day. Some things I needed, some I didn’t. The hardest one to steal was the doorknob. I 

used it on my door at Shane’s house and on my old bedroom door in the cold basement when I 

moved back in with my mom. This is the third poem I’ve written that mentions this same 

doorknob. 

We stained those flannel sheets up good. Your come and my come, together forever. Stains are 

useless. I forget where the bruise came from, but it was pretty. 

I’d never seen you angrier than the time I called you crazy, and you threw your Blackberry at 

me. The same Blackberry you’d text me on in the same room. You loved that phone and I 

watched you destroy it. We destroy the things we love. 

I dated another girl after you for six months, and the time flew by.