I met my best friend in fifth grade.
We were just friends, sitting by each other in class,
Working on projects together,
Making creative gifts for the other one,
Sat together at lunch every day.
Laughing and smiling,
Having the best of times.
Spending recess together often
Playing a game called "Kill",
Where I was the only girl with a bunch of boys.
But that didn't bother me.
I liked him; I liked him a lot.
***
We were still best friends in sixth grade.
Closer friends, though we had no classes together.
Feeling so happy with each other,
And still sitting with the other one at lunch every day.
Laughing and smiling,
Having the best of times.
We both loved art class,
And chatted about our hobbies.
I was the only girl at our lunch table.
But that didn't bother me-
I really liked him; I was crushing hard.
***
We were once again still best friends in seventh grade;
Probably the closest pair of friends in the school.
No classes together again, which was sad.
Never fought, except one brief time...
Yes, we still sat together at lunch every day.
Laughing and smiling,
Having the best of times.
For half the year, I knew:
That I loved him.
I knew everything about him.
He knew everything about me.
He was perfect for me.
And we were inseparable;
That was just the way things were.
***
The other half of seventh grade changed.
I met a new guy...
And started crushing on him.
He and I became good, close friends.
We laughed, teased, and smiled;
We made each other's day all the time.
Like my best friend and I did.
Always flirting and spending time together,
Then I asked him out...
And he said yes.
***
Months later, five to be exact,
We're still dating.
Though it's summer,
I still love him,
And he still loves me.
We're eight miles apart-
With contact forbidden-
But still in love.
***
My best friend and I have a better friendship.
I'm not in love with him anymore,
But I still admire him.
I used to wish that he could be mine;
But we could never be together.
He didn't crush on me,
And we have different religions.
But we're still super close,
And love to spend time together.
***
We've been best friends
For three years-
Fifth, sixth, and seventh.
Going into eighth grade
Will just be another year to add
To all the fun, sweet, and happy memories
That we've shared.
Telling each other secrets,
Admitting fears and desires...
The best pair of friends ever.
***
He's a guy.
I'm a girl.
We may have some different interests,
But we're similar in thousands of ways.
But knowing that:
We'll still be close,
Still get along,
Smile every day,
Talk a mile a minute,
Laugh so hard we can't breathe,
Finish each other's sentences...
Is the best thing I could want
In our friendship.
***
I have a boyfriend now-
And I love him.
I have a best friend too-
And I'm happy for him.
Because my best friend and I
Are incredibly close.
Friends forever and ever,
And that's honest all the way.
100% true
***
And nothing, not anything
Could ever damage our bond
Of true friendship:
In the form of two people,
Two lives.
We may fight later on
We may get mad or upset
But if we do, we know
That we'll always be best friends.
Because nothing comes in the way-
Of true friendship.
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139,507 Literary Works • 672,595 Reviews
Heya, this is Pretzel here and if you are wondering why I am reviewing your work, or how I even found it I need to finish a review about "friendship" to be valid in the Star Wars Contest which I really want to win and so I searched friends and your work popped up, so here I am for a review!
First of all, I really like how you have a time lapse, between one grade year and another year, and as another reviewer said, I personally think that this is very unique here. It shows how true friendships grow in years together, and I think that's pretty cool way to show it.
As clevercogs mentioned, you definitively need to work through your formatting to make it way more visually appealing, and I really wanted to give you an awesome guideline and resource that a friendly user on YWS wrote. How to Format Poetry. It has really been a great great help for me, and I hope that it will serve you as well.
Now, let's get onto some things that you can improve:
Your wordchoice such as "best friends" "crush" and "love" does drive this poem on the edge of a cliche. It really seems like it's so typical middle-school (which is fine since you're probably in middle school rn) but I think that you could be more creative, and create more complex situations to make this a bit more original and dramatic. Don't just keep on repeating that you always sat next to eachother at the lunch table, but maybe come up with different ideas of how you show your friend that you care a lot.
I believe this is the line that you kept on repeating in almost every stanza, and I think that you should maybe really work on this so that you could strengthen it more and more so that it could have better and more meaning, if you see what I mean. That last line(third) is really cliche, and the reason being is that I want to learn more, I want to know what experiences you have, I want you to provide with an example or two. I can't imagine what the best of time means for you, because since it's so over-rated, it probably means something different for everyone.
I don't know why, but this really seemed so simplistic and childish. We're in this world where gender-roles are being redefined and etc. Also, this is like literally stating the obvious, because I think that the reader can definitively infer that the narrator is a girl and her best friend is a guy because of the pronouns that are used.
The first staza, was should be the opening one, seems to be holding very minimal emotions in my opinion. I feel like there should be more feelings going through her mind, and more showing and less telling. I don't know if you have heard this phrase, but it's all very common around YWS: Show, don't tell. Also here is another article that I would definitively refer that you read, because it has helped me tremendously with my flat prose or poem sentences:Breathing Emotions into Scenes
The last stanza is probably my favorite because it really seems to describe bonding in a simple cycle kind of way. Like we fight, we make up, and its alright, 'cause we're true friends. It kind of sounds extremely innocent a little bit, if I may dare say, but you kind of bare-boned it down here.
As a side note, I don't believe that rhyming is all that important at all in poems. Some people will tell you otherwise, but I still think that no rhyme is better than forced rhyme, and here it seems like no rhyme seems to suit your poem more, as although this topic is light-hearted, it's also pretty common to write about and talk about.
That's all that I have for you today. If you any questions please let me know. I hope that this review helps improve your writing.
~P.S.
Hiya, I really love this poem! It is very true, and raw. I love the way "Friend" or "friendship" is so often repeated, it really drives the point of the narrative of this piece. However I would be careful with the words "love" and "crush" as I feel it could drag your work into the cliche area. Overall though, it is a really great poem with lots of potential and it is very easy to identify with
Well done and keep up that great work
El x
Hi again, Catlover211 (I've seen you around YWS enough to know what the numbers in your name are, finally)! cleverclogs here to review!
Okay, before I even say anything about the poem itself, I need to ask this: What's up with the weird formatting. It sways this way and that, and it's visually unappealing. I'm not sure how you would go about fixing this, but please do, for the sake of my eyes.
Now, onto the review.
Over the past few weeks, I've been
stalkingfollowing and keeping up with your poetry. I've noticed that a lot of your poems depend on childish charm and rhymes, so this was a nice departure from that. It's always good to expand your writing style beyond what you usually do. Now, I'll admit that when I first started reading this, I sort of groaned to myself and was like, "great, another teenage love story". Then this turned out to be something totally different and I was pleasantly surprised. So, overall, I did like this. I do have a few suggestions, though.I feel like here, you should go into how you met the friend. The first line seems like it's going to, but then the poem goes straight into describing the friendship. If you could spare a line to tell us something about how you met, like a funny anecdote, I think that would help establish the friendship better to the reader. And if how you actually met was really boring, you can just make something up in the name of good poetry.
I think that this line (and the other variations of it) are too straightforward. This is a poem, an excuse to wrap everything up in metaphors and pretty language. Instead of just telling us you like him, It'd be better to describe how your heart beats faster when he does this or that, or something along those lines. It would be more interesting to read.
A lot of times, the poem repeats that you sat together at lunch every day and that you didn't have classes together. I began to feel say, "Okay, but why is this important and relevant to the poem?" It feels sort of crammed in there and irrelevant to the poem, especially the thing about not having classes together. It didn't really tell me anything about the characters' friendship. The lunch thing was fine for the first few stanzas, but then it just got old.
I don't really understand the "contact forbidden" thing- did your parents find out and forbid you from speaking with him? And if so, why? Also, I'd caution against the use of the word "love" in poems like this, because not many people will take it seriously. As someone of roughly the same age as you, I have trouble imagining two people my age in what I consider to be love. It makes me think of irrational teenagers who don't really know what love is. Forgive my cynicism, but that's my opinion.
That was about all that I could quote at you, really. There were some issues with grammar and punctuation, but I'll let some other review pick those out so this review doesn't end up being ridiculously long.
I liked the message that this portrayed about friendship, and I'm glad that you didn't let your feelings early on for your friend get in the way of that. I think that my main problem with this poem is that it doesn't really know what it's trying to say. It starts with the main conflict being that you have feelings for your friend that he doesn't return- but then this is resolved and the poem becomes something about true friendship. As I said earlier, there's too much in this poem that isn't relevant, to the point where I can't really tell what it's supposed to be about. Once the conflict is resolved, I'm left wondering if all the things about you having feelings for your friend was at all relevant. It changes topics too often.
I understand that this is based on a true story, so it may not make sense all the time, but this poem doesn't tell the story very well. I'd recommend revising it so that its direction is once clearer. Sometimes life doesn't translate well into storytelling, so you could omit parts that aren't relevant to the friendship, even if it's not the whole story. As Mark Twain once said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."
Overall, I did like the message that this gave about friendship, but it was too unorganized to be a truly great poem. I think you are an excellent writer, so please use this feedback to become even better. Keep on writing!
Hey, I'll be reviewing your poem today.
This seems like a personal piece of poetry, it was light-hearted and it had a clear narrative.
But with the formatting and prominent narrative, it came off a bit as if you were writing a short story or a diary entry, it wasn't necessarily poetic.
"I met my best friend in fifth grade.
We were just friends, sitting by each other in class,
Working on projects together,
Making creative gifts for the other one,
Sat together at lunch every day.
Laughing and smiling,
Having the best of times
Spending recess together often
Playing a game called "Kill",
Where I was the only girl with a bunch of boys.
But that didn't bother me.
I liked him; I liked him a lot."
I think this was a good opening, but it didn't hold as much emotion as I would've liked to have felt. It reads as very similar to pretty much everyone's experience of a crush, consider what made this one different? Did he look/act any different to any other guys? Why it made an impact on you?
The rest of the stanza's feel more or less like this one, they're telling the same story but in different ways.
Overall, I hope this helped. Keep writing!
--Chips
Thanks Chips, for this review!! I'll make some changes to it as soon as I can.
This did help, so hope you have a great day! Happy writing!
Hello there CatLover211! The Silent Bagpipe here to review some of your work =)
First off I am just going to say that this poem was very cool in a unique kind of way. It is true about the bond a friendship creates. Having a bond nothing can touch makes everything in life look up. My favorite part of your poem was the last verse about friendship, it really described what I have with my best friend. Thank you for that, your poem made me smile. I liked how you did the different grades, showing how you were friends through them. Very good way of explaining a long lasting friendship. I also liked how you made it where even when the girl in the poem got a boyfriend she still remembered her best friend. That is something that doesn't happen often. I really liked how you explained the differences as well, between having a guy friend and having a boy friend. Lots of people think that having a guy as a best friend is like him being your 'boyfriend' so not true. I like having guys friends, but it doesn't mean they are my boyfriends LOL
One thing I could point out in this poem is that it didn't really have any rhyming words, but you don't really need them. Its just something that makes a poem better =)
That is all I have for now! Talk to you on chat
~The Silent Bagpipe
Thank you for this review!! It made me happy to know you liked it!! I just wrote it today, so I posted it, and now I have one satisfied reader.
I have a feeling we'll be friends soon!! Have a great day and happy writing!
xD Your welcome, it was a cool poem *thumbs up*
Hopefully! We have quite a bit in common xD