– after Bret Elizabeth Jenkins
Written by Kendra Whitfield
I was almost someone’s best friend but the only house my mother could afford was on the
other side of the schoolyard from the pretty dancers who double-dutched at recess, their
ponytails whisking back and forth like streamers, their braces glinting in the late spring sun.
I was almost someone’s best friend but I could never play on Saturday afternoons because my
mother needed help to bathe my grandmother in a green-tiled bathroom with steamy air that
smelled of pee and Ivory.
I was almost someone’s best friend but I could never invite anyone over after school in case
my dad was passed out in the living room, his hairy gut hanging over the waistband of pants
that fit him years ago, the last time he went to work.
I was almost someone’s best friend.
Once.
.
Kendra Whitfield lives and writes at the southern edge of the Northern Boreal Forest. When not writing, she can be found swimming laps at the local pool or basking in sunbeams on her back deck. Her work has been anthologized by Community Building Art Works and Beyond the Veil Press.