Besties Fer Sure

Two Memorex cassette tapes.

My closest friend

goes to my church where we

“youths” meet every Wednesday night

to play icebreakers

practice flirting

and pray.

Samantha is cute and petite,

the Shirley Feeney to my

gangly, poor-postured Laverne.

We spend hours

tethered

by curlicued phone cords

that conduct

gossip about what the bad kids are doing.

Marveling

that people our age

drink and smoke pot and presumably

don’t care about brain cells functioning.

And sex!

Risk pregnancy?

Why tempt wreckage like that?

How do they not care what anyone thinks?

What everyone thinks.

A corded landline phone with a rotary dial on the handset.

We theorize bra stuffing

by a showy, singing girl,

skinny everywhere but her boobs.

Our rumor busted by a youth trip

to the water park.

Worse, all must wait as

red-faced, I wrestle jeans vs. damp legs.

I bring my boom box to Samantha’s

for sleepovers.

We choreograph dance moves to

mixtapes featuring

Madonna and Michael and Cyndi,

practice Valley Girl impressions,

whispering the word bitchin’

laughing at ourselves

until our stomach muscles ache.

Fully aware

of what huge nerds we each are.

But together, we’re,

like, totally fer sure awesome.

Two Memorex cassette tapes, one at the top of the page and the other at the bottom. A drawing of Michael Jackson on a piece of wrinkled torn paper is below the top cassette tape. Jackson is standing with his left leg crossed over his right and his arms at his sides, one hand splayed and the other pointing to his legs. His hair is dark and curly. He wears a jacket with a large V-shaped lapel that extends from the shoulders to the bottom hem. His pants stop at the ankles and he wears dark slip-on shoes with a slight heel. ‘Michael Jackson Thriller’ is written in cursive to the right of the drawing. Two album covers are below the drawing of Jackson and above the second cassette tape. Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ shows Madonna in a lacy bustier posing beneath a blanket. Her curly hair is voluminous and swept over her head to the left. She has a raised eyebrow and the corner of her lips is raised. Cyndi Lauper’s ‘She’s So Unusual’ shows Lauper in a strapless dress which has a poofy knee-length skirt. She is posed with her right arm at a 90-degree angle, and her left arm sticking out in front of her. She stands on her left leg with her right leg bent and turned inwards. Her hair is shoulder length and spread around her face. A building is behind her and an umbrella is on the ground in the lower left corner of the cover.