By Ben Fetterman
Old tests
That you studied hours to pass.
Projects which consumed your weekends
When you should have been having fun.
Homework your cried over,
Died inside over.
Shirts you used to love to wear,
And made memories in
That no longer fit,
But you can’t bear to part with.
Broken dreams mixed in
With the broken phones.
A favorite stuffed animal or three
From your childhood.
So many memories,
So much sentiment,
But to anyone else,
All they see is
Clutter
By Ben Fetterman
It’s always interesting to see
The things in others that make them who they are.
And to wonder what it is
That others see in us.
Whether it’s the way we dress,
The way we speak,
Our interests and tastes.
These traits endear others to us,
Or are the things that drive us insane.
It’s often sad to see people
That try to bury these bits of themselves,
And appear as generic as possible.
It’s exciting to see those who embrace their quirks,
As in the end,
These are the things that make us all
Interesting
By Ben Fetterman
“You’re not good enough.”
“She doesn’t like, no girl ever has.”
These thoughts, I’ve got to escape
“Your friends aren’t friends.”
“They’re just using you.”
Grab the keys, a drive will clear my mind.
“They don’t care about your problems,”
“So don’t waste your breath,”
Faster, farther, maybe I can get far enough away
“They just use you to dump their problems on.”
“You’re just bothering them the rest of the time.”
Music, let’s play some loud music, maybe I can drown them out.
“You always text them to talk, never the other way”
“If you don’t text them first, no one will talk to you.”
I wish I could just cry, and let it all go.
“But if you always text first,“
“They’ll leave you because you’re too clingy.”
But I can’t,
So at least the drive provides a fleeting reprieve.
By Ben Fetterman
Have you ever sat down and thought
About the people you know,
And the memories you share.
How one you hold near and dear
As being the epitome of what your friendship is,
Could be one they don’t remember.
Or the grudge you won’t let go of,
Was a slight forgotten moments after occuring.
Which brings up another, oft forgotten, parallel.
As most people tend to focus on their views of others,
And forget how
The same could be true
About the memories of you
In the minds of others.
By Ben Fetterman
Everyone needs a friend
Someone to rely upon,
With whom they can share a problem,
Or tell their inner thoughts.
Some can spread this task
Across their many friends,
While others,
They,
For reasons all their own,
Need one person
Upon whom to trust,
With whom to be
Really,
Truly,
Close.
By Ben Fetterman
Have you ever had a friend,
Crush, or acquaintance,
Who’s presence made everything
Just feel ok.
Who made your worries fade,
And gave you a feeling that
Nothing could go wrong.
And it wasn’t just a momentary feeling,
Quickly fading as they left.
No,
It lingered for days,
And even in the face of challenges,
And threats of imminent failure,
You still felt content and ready
To take on this challenge head on,
Consequences be damned.
These are the friends that make you
Laugh at loneliness,
Send sadness packing,
And allay anxiety at last.
These are the friends one should
Work the hardest to keep,
Yet one doesn’t notice that’s who they are
Until they’re long gone it seems.
But to find and reconnect with them,
Even briefly,
Is well worth the effort.
By Ben Fetterman
In an age of instant gratifications,
When the time between sending and receiving messages
Is measured in milliseconds,
And a day between sending a message and receiving a reply,
Is considered an agonizing eternity,
Imagine, if you will,
Having to wait a week,
To get a one text reply
To an entire week of back texts,
Sent at the modern pace.
Suddenly the prospect of sending letters comes back in vogue.
As it long as it takes to get all the way there,
And the reply to come all the way back,
The information density makes the wait worthwhile.
A low tech friend
In a high tech world
Really makes you take a step back,
And think about your priorities.
What’s important enough to put in a letter,
That will still be relevant in a week,
When they finally receive it.
This suddenly puts your momentary woes
And transitory joys,
Into perspective
In this world of rapid swings from bliss to melancholy and back.
These moments,
Though they sum up into the entirety of your life,
Don’t usually matter individually.
Low tech friends in a high tech world
Help keep you grounded
And everything
In perspective.
By Ben Fetterman
There’s a story to be told,
In thoughts that were never finished.
In comments that just petered off
As the realization set in
That no one is listening.
When no one notices the unfinished thought,
And it hits like a punch in the gut.
And starts that devastating train of thought.
Do they really care about what I think?
Do they hear anything I say?
Are they actually interested in what I have to say?
And most of the time you’re completely wrong,
And they do care and are listening,
They just got distracted.
But then,
Once in a while,
Just often enough to validate your fears,
They don’t care.
And especially if they’re a friend,
That really hurts,
Always makes you wonder
Who’s next to hurt you.
By Ben Fetterman
We see them in jokes they’d like,
In stories we want to tell them,
In questions we want to ask them,
In memories of laughter past.
We all have that person who we look back on,
And realize we miss them.
We may have had a fight that ended it,
But often we simply grew apart from them.
We realized it slowly at first.
In text responses that took a bit longer than usual.
In hangouts getting gradually shorter and more sporadic.
Then suddenly, contact drops off.
Texts pile up.
There’s might be an occasional glimmer of hope.
A period of consistent replies.
Then it’s gone again.
And you hope you just said something dumb.
That they’ll come back in a huff in a day or two,
And you can smooth everything out.
But in your hear you realize,
That that’s not the case.
They have moved on,
And you should too.
But you can’t help but hope the one day,
They’ll realize they missed you too,
And your friendship can begin anew.
By Ben Fetterman
That comment tossed out
In a moment of absent-mindedness
We’ve all said them,
We’ve all heard them.
Most people don’t pay much attention to either side.
But when you listen for them,
Pay attention for them,
They reveal so much.
A glimpse into their mind,
A moment of accidental vulnerability.
While not remembered often by the utterer,
Their impact on the listener, though,
Can be dramatic.
As it often reveals
The inner monologue the speaker has
About what they are actually thinking.
And confirm the fears,
Or hopes,
Of those who pay enough attention
To pick out this mindless slip
From the sugar coated statements
Hiding this gem of truth.
Tilting Bolt 