Sonnet Sunday 31: Ode to Catie

I’ve been publishing way too many serious sonnets lately. Let’s go for something completely different, shall we?

I pretty much always have at least one friend with whom my relationship is based largely on snark. One of my closest friends and I, for example, pretty much operate off the principle of mutually assured destruction. Or I have another friend with whom our relationship can best be described as over the top sarcastic outbursts of love and affection (for example, I will periodically sneak up on her and give her the most over-the-top hug possible).

Catie fell somewhere between the two. Catie and I were coworkers at a dry cleaners for several years; there were actually six or seven of us who were long-term employees under the management of Debbie, who had worked there since high school some 20 years before, and we all had an odd bond of loyalty that wasn’t wholly merited. Catie was several years younger; I think she may have just graduated from high school by the time I finally quit that job to move to Lansing. At any rate, we had one of “those” relationships. In the last few months before I moved away, she supplied me with the above photo, and I responded with the following sonnet. I did not edit it at all. It’s ridiculous enough as it is.

One final note: despite our sarcastically declared BFF! status, I’m not sure we ever talked after I moved away. We friended each other on Facebook, but that’s as good as it got.

Ode to Catie

Written May 5, 2005

So Catie wants a poem. She is my
Best Friend Forever. Or am I her Buttface?
I can’t remember. (Debbie makes me cry.)
I’m writing this in pen. I can’t erase.
But why would I want to erase my rhyme?
It is my ode to Catie, after all.
This shall remain until the end of time
‘Cuz Catie rocks and I am in her thrall.
I am so glad that she is my best friend
She even drew a picture of us two:
We’re in a grassy meadow, holding hands,
And though it’s black and white, the sky is blue.
This sonnet’s done, but that is quite all right;
I cannot think of what else I should write.