Wanted: Local BFF

Wanted: Local best friend who loves coffee and/or tea and/or wine, meandering conversation, and silly jokes. Must have a penchant for long emails, late-night confessions, and stargazing. (Translation for stargazing: a hunt for direction, light, and hope amid the city's concrete and skyscrapers. A sincere belief that we can find them, even if, even if...) An appreciation for words in any form is a bonus. Must be familiar with the falling down aspects of life but mostly with the getting back up part. Ideally finds over-communication endearing. Willing to spend too much time pondering what-did-he-mean-when-he-said, even when we both know he meant precisely what he said. Hoping for someone who likes five minute phone calls mid-afternoon to discuss whether or not vitamin water goes bad and can handle almost-panicked phone calls at 11:49 pm about a helicopter flying over the apartment searching for three men who held up a bodega at gunpoint. Someone who knows when to insist on an immediate glass of wine to analyze all the details and who also has a thing for long-term plans. Someone who had no judgmental tendencies of anyone, ever. Well, almost ever. Most importantly, must be intimately familiar with the concept of throwing oneself into the unknown in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and figuring it out along the way. Actually, the very most important quality - just knows how to be a good friend.


[I am very, very grateful to have many wonderful friends in my life who match this description. I'd just like one a little closer by, please.]

a thousand thank yous

I know I will return to the very best parts of these weeks tiny moment by tiny moment. Days upon days of lightness and joy best revisited breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat. The unexpected emails, the one question interview - would you like this position? - the sweet taste of peanut butter frosting, the choreographed syllables of the word collaborate, the night air streaming in the window as he does surveillance of the neighborhood - my neighborhood deemed safe by the best of the best - the side silhouette of a city I call home on a midnight bus to DC, a tour of the new office, his arm resting on the center consul between us.

A thousand thank yous I sent across the avenues and down the streets on foggy mornings and snowy afternoons, sent upward beyond the tops of the buildings and through subway tunnels. And still, a thousand thank yous could never be enough for the moments when life swoops me up and carries me over the thresholds of doorways I once deemed closed-doored and dead-bolted. Again and evermore, thank you.