Nobody told me
that somewhere around thirty-five
the invitations stop arriving
and you are just supposed to know people.
Like they came pre-loaded.
Like friendship is a factory setting
and somewhere in the update
mine got wiped.

Making friends as an adult
is harder than open heart surgery
performed by an armless man
who is also on hold with insurance
and the music is just
the same four bars
of something you almost recognize
over and over and over.

You meet someone.
You click.
You think, this is it, this is a person,
this is someone who laughs at the right things
and gets the reference
and does not make you perform being okay
just to get through dinner.
And then life does what life does.
Schedules happen.
Weather happens.
Distance happens.
And you text each other
"we should get together soon"
until soon becomes
a word that means never
in the language of adults
who mean well
but run out of bandwidth
somewhere between Tuesday
and the rest of their lives.

Nobody teaches you this.
School hands you a building
full of people your age
trapped in the same rooms
by law.
Friendship was inevitable.
Friction created fire.
Now you have to manufacture the friction yourself
and somehow not come across
as desperate
which you are
which we all are
just standing here
with our hands out
hoping someone grabs one
before we lose our nerve.

I have tried.
I want that on the record.
I have said yes to things.
I have showed up.
I have laughed at stories
I only half followed
and asked follow up questions
like a person who is good at this.
And sometimes it works
for a little while
and then it just
quietly
stops.
No fight.
No reason.
Just silence
where a person used to be.

The armless surgeon
at least has a goal.
A clear objective.
A heart on the table.
Open it, fix it, close it, done.
But adult friendship
has no table.
No chart.
No guarantee that cutting yourself open
means anyone is going to show up
for the procedure.

So here I am.
Still trying.
Still saying yes to things.
Still believing that somewhere out there
is a person who will stick
who will not fade
who will answer the text
before it turns into
delivered.

And if you are out there
and you are also doing this badly
and you also laugh at the wrong moments
and care too much
and stay too long
and mean it when you say
we should get together soon,

then hi.
I am Aaron.
I have been looking for you
for years.