Friendship Song
by Sam Herschel Wein

The lakefront waves whistle like whisker sounds 
over the rocks, golden triple-deck blocks 

where the water pools when the tide is high.
We lay on the rocks’ middle tier in connecting shapes, 

lines of bodies with heads connecting to legs, to 
stomachs, eight of us, touching somehow, all the way

through our skin, reading, or gently applying the lotion
of the sun, or napping, a sun hat over the face, 

communal rest time, it says on the calendar. 
On the calendar, we plan rest. We plan we give 

each other the glorious gift of exhales, release from
weeks of shoulder tension, worries buzzing 

beyond our breathing breathe in two three four out two 
three four five six seven eight and our 

eyes, 8 sets of lilypads crossing the gorge, dragonflies 
scaling the sidewalks to the rocks that we rest upon, 

the friendship, our family, we let each other 
sleep, we row our bones through galleries of 
​
arms and corner our tongues to our ears, 
and we say, I got you. You can let it all, all go.

---

 Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. They are an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Their third chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is faggotly forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. He co-founded and edits Underblong. Recent work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Waxwing Mag, and Shenandoah, among others. Gaze at their beautiful website at www.samherschelwein.com.