Poetry Speaks: "The Vows" by Me

A celebration of female friendship + book recommendations

Photo by Yanapi Senaud on Unsplash

After a lengthy break, I started writing poetry again last year. I let imposter syndrome and perfectionism get in the way of my writing for a long time, and I reached a point where I was just tired of that being the case, so I got to work again. Some poems take months to write, others I start and can't ever finish, but sometimes inspiration strikes, and words pour out like water. That's what happened when I wrote a poem called "The Vows."

On a Sunday last April, I was sitting in my favorite chair and had just hung up the phone after talking to my best friend for a long time. I'm not a phone person, but I become a phone person for her. Our friendship makes me smile for many reasons, but one of them is that we could not be more opposite. She's a married homesteader with five children, and I'm happily single, even more happily childless, and can't keep a plant alive, let alone a garden and farm animals. Despite the short list of things we have in common, our friendship works. It's been working for over 20 years.

After our phone call, I remember feeling deep love for my friend and other friends in my life. One relationship has lasted for 30 years; others are newer, fresh and growing. Some friends are around my age, while others are older. (Intergenerational friendship has been one of the great gifts of my life.) I feel so strongly that female friendship is a special bond that should be cherished. Friendships aren't extra relationships you should make time for between being a wife or a mom. They're not bonus relationships next to the ones that really count. Friendships are full of deep, abiding love; we should celebrate, guard, and take them seriously.

I wanted to do that, so I wrote this poem, which was published in the first issue of Paloma Magazine here on Substack. I love this piece, and I hope you do, too.

“The Vows”

I’ll show up at 2:00 a.m. 
with an armful of peonies. 
I’ll celebrate you and cry
with you. I’ll summon a future
where we talk about our days
into the night. The nights 
spill into mornings, so groggy, so bright, 
the coffee never strong enough. 
You can see my hair when I wake up. 
I’ll brush yours, careful
where it’s tangled. I’m not a hugger,
but I’ll hold you if you need it. 
I’ll take your hand and squeeze it 
underneath a table. I’ll lock eyes 
across the room and roll them 
when you do, when the same man
makes the same joke that’s never been funny. 
I’ll look beautiful for you, I’ll look messy
for you, I’ll look for goodness
in your scars. I’ll tell you
who you are when you forget. 
I’ll cuddle your babies 
and ask for pictures, in love 
with their sweet faces and pudgy thighs.
I’ll put a ring on your finger
and pledge forever, so many brides
coming down the aisle in their white
dresses, saying “I do” to the ones
they’ve laughed with for decades.
Let’s spend the rest of our lives
loving and cheering and grieving
and hoping the vows somehow hold. 

Poetry is a wonderful way to celebrate friendship, but so are novels. I’ve enjoyed many books with friendship at their core, so here are eight recommendations for you.

• Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

  • Alice, a novelist, encounters Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is recovering from a break-up and starts flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

  • Two young couples, Sid and Charity and Larry and Sally, from different backgrounds–East and West, rich and poor–befriend each other in 1937 Madison, Wisconsin.

• Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

  • After walking from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed relationship, Gil discovers new neighbors in the glass-walled house next door and finds his life meshing with theirs.

• Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer

  • A tale loosely inspired by Robert Lowell and Flannery O’Connor traces the intense friendship and literary bond shared by two mid-20th-century New York writers through an exchange of letters that explores their respective writing forms and beliefs about faith, passion, and the nature of acceptable sacrifice.

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

  • A novel set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris follows the director of a Chicago art gallery and a woman looking for her estranged daughter in Paris who both struggle to come to terms with the ways AIDS has affected their lives.

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

  • Moving to New York to pursue creative ambitions, four former classmates share decades marked by love, loss, addiction, and haunting elements from a brutal childhood.

• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno Garcia

  • Returing to Mexico City to attend her father’s funeral, Meche runs into an old friend, with whom she discovered she could cast spells using music, reviving buried memories that cause her to question her estrangement from her loved ones.

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

  • Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, this is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

All summaries are from NoveList.

---

Are there any quotes, poems, or books about friendship you love? Has a friend influenced your taste or bookish habits? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments. Thanks for reading!