Christian Poems About Friendship

Bless the dish with no label, the pie leaning slightly left, the recipe remembered differently by three generations. Bless the friend who brought ice, the child counting paper plates, the widower taking a small portion because this is his first crowded table since winter. May we notice who has not eaten, who needs a chair, and who would rather take food home. Let abundance become attention.

They have worshiped three rows apart since the argument. On Family and Friends Sunday, neither wants a public scene. One waits beside the coffee urn. The other finally walks over. I was wrong about that part, he says. Not everything. That part. It is not complete forgiveness. It is not a photograph. It is one honest sentence, a chair pulled out, and room for the next conversation.

You are not the friend who arrives with flowers. You are the friend who arrives with a plunger at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday and doesn't mention it again. You have seen my kitchen at its worst—the week I couldn't lift a sponge, the dishes growing civilizations I didn't have the diplomacy to address. You washed them without comment. When I was twenty, I thought friendship was the people you'd take a bullet for. At forty, I know it's the people who will sit with you in the car outside the party for as long as it takes for you to decide if you're going in. You have never made me feel like a project. You have made me feel like a person whose worst days are just days— ordinary, survivable, yours to witness without flinching. That is the whole of it. That is more than enough.