Woodchips and Paperclips

This and "Wind Through the Pine Needles" were both adapted from something I originally wrote as prose. I know it's clunky, but keep in mind I'm new at this whole narrative poetry thing (and poetry as a whole, for that matter).

In second grade,

I met a Russian kid named

Yuri.

Short, dark hair and big, white teeth.

Green and yellow striped shirt.

Almost all of my memories of

Yuri

take place at the playground.

He was so much fun to chase and play with,

and he was so creative.

Before he moved here,

my friends and I played a game

where the ground in the park

was a giant lake of lava,

and we’d have to traverse

the playground without touching it.

Yuri

took our game and turned it on its head.

Now instead of lava,

the woodchips were shark-infested waters.

This was good because it meant you could accidentally,

briefly touch the woodchips for a second and be ok.

Perhaps your toe touched the waters,

But no shark was around.

Yuri

moved away that same year.

I was broken-hearted.

I remember our last bus ride together.

We were scared that we’d forget each other

and not be friends anymore.

Then

Yuri

had another brilliant idea.

He took a paper clip out of his backpack

and bent it until it broke in half.

He gave one half to me,

saying that it was a symbol of our friendship,

that we were like two halves of the same thing

that were about to be separated for good.

We bravely shook hands,

because that’s what grown-ups do in these situations,

and swore that we’d never forget each other.

When I got home,

I put my half of the paper clip

on the windowsill.

Before long, I lost it.

But I never forget

Yuri.