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Hey, I'm Jeff-- I'm a UVM mentor and your poem caught my eye!

I like what you did with the back and forth on the perspectives here. It gives the poem an interesting rhythm and kind of shows two sides to a story that most people would only see one side to. I also like what you did with your verb tenses-- you started everything in present tense (which keeps the reader in the moment) but then ended it in the past tense-- definitively closing the piece, ending the story. How did you make this decision-- when you wrote the last line, were you concious of that effect? I'm just curious, but the way you handled that (whether it was intentional or intuitive) works well for the poem.

A place you could push this piece: one aspect of the poem that jumps out at me as a bit clunky is the line "she wants just to know how he's such a good friend." It looks like that line could maybe be reworked, just because it's an awkward construction that might distract the reader. Did you have something that you wanted to convey by using the words that you did? It's possible I may have missed something; if there was a certain intent behind it I'd be curious to hear what it was and tell you what I think.

Interesting piece-- keep writing!

It's totally fine to not know. Developing as a writer is really exciting because it means becoming aware of what you're doing with words. Writers always start out just writing-- and that's the most important thing at first, to produce a lot of words, to get comfortable with the task itself. That next level is becoming hyper aware of what words can do-- syntactically (which is just a fancy umbrella term for sentence construction, verb tenses, all that "grammar stuff") and aesthetically (the images-- the "pretty stuff"). A great book on craft (if you feel like you want some more in depth guidance on what words can do and how to use them) is "Imaginative Writing," I think by Janet Burroway. It's not easy stuff-- it's a college level text-- and it's a bit expensive, I think it prices for about 40 bucks on Amazon. Still, even if now you're more comfortable with the idea of just producing and not really studying "writing craft" (which is a big, intense, sometimes scary path to take), the next most important thing is to pay close attention to the words an author picks when you're reading something you like. You can kind of turn it into a game almost-- when you come across a paragraph or sentence in a story that moves you or makes you feel a certain way, try to think about why. It won't always be easy or obvious to figure out why a piece of writing evokes a certain emotion for you, but the more you try to "read like a writer", the more aware you'll become of craft in your own writing without necessarily having to buy a book on craft.

As far as that specific line goes-- I liked your initial instinct on the image of "friend", because it sort of implies a line between how she sees him and what he might want. I guess that's the best guidance I can try to give-- see if you can work the phrase around that instinct, but more clearly.

Sorry if I got carried away on that comment! Haha, have a good night.

Jeff