Friendship

Shelley Armitage

June 14, 2022

We shared a couple of red-necked boys

who stomped their boots to a western two-step

near a wind-gutted arroyo on the Canadian River

tent top dance, hot summer night, sticky

armpits the color of the fading day.

We were on college break, no real boyfriends.

These two would have to do.

You’d left this little hometown of yours

famous for its sandy soil peaches,

the year you went off to college leaving

your high school boyfriend with dull ambitions behind.

He scrambled the letters on the local movie marquee

to read:  Jamie s__ks.  Pretty embarrassing  

for this little West Texas bible-toting town.

You told these stories at college. We giggled

and told ours.  So when you broke your leg

playing pick-up basketball, we were all speechless

your paling expression we’d never seen.

I shouldered you to my Beetle--

another dance—and said, Jamie

don't worry, I am here for you.

But at the doctor’s office when he jerked

that baby into place, I fainted dead away, 

making my way into another of your stories.

Shelley Armitage is a professor emerita at University of Texas at El Paso, former Roderick Chair, and Fulbrighter as well as a recipient of NEA, NEH, and Rockefeller grants. I've published over fifty refereed articles and eight books, the most recent, Walking the Llano, a memoir inspired by the family farm and grasslands.