Women Friends

Women Friends Are so much easier to find when you can pass them notes in the hallway about boys you’re obsessing over, and when sleepovers are commonplace for lady bonding. But as they marry and move away, you are forced to cry into a cell phone on your hardest days, instead of cuddling on the couch, intermittently berating your boyfriends between commercials of The Hills. In the longing void of their presence, you find loneliness deeper than any from a man. An ache of kinship still alive from afar; asking you to nurture it, as your arms long to hold the newborn resting on his mother in an alternate time zone. Offering anecdotes via meme way passed midnight. Little reminders that love isn’t lost with girlish innocence. Then one day, by chance, you meet another and you watch as she tends to her son in a way you recognize. You'll never know fully the things that shaped her as a girl — those slumber party times have passed. But you eat together and realize that it’s never too late to ask for belonging. Like coats, collected through the years, they keep us warm on days we need them most.