As I type this, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, looking out at the park and the trees turning orange. I’m eating homemade banana bread - gifted to me by a friend as a housewarming gift. How nice is that? Friends are the best.

I’ve been thinking about friends a lot lately. I was going through boxes and found some old photos of us dressed up, glammed up, sparkling and smiling into the camera. We looked so beautiful! Our young skin was flawless, our eyes bright and optimistic. We were so carefree. So happy, happy! Good times.

But it’s not the good times, alone, that cement friendships. When I look at that old photo of K, for example, I don’t think of that fancy party - the one we couldn’t believe we got invited to. I think of how two weeks later, she rubbed my back while I cried and stayed with me until I fell asleep. And when I woke up, she’d cleaned my kitchen.

I don’t mean to be so dramatic - life isn’t black and white, joy or despair. Mostly, it’s normal, average - dull, even. And having a friend means someone to keep you company during the mundane days of life. Someone to complain to when you haven’t seen the sun in ten days. Someone to tell you what to make for dinner. Someone to help you through February. February! Can anyone survive February without a friend? I don’t see how.

Anyway, that’s what I love about this poem. It’s about the significance of a kitchen table, but really it’s about friendship and life itself. I hope you like it.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

BY JOY HARJO

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Until next week!

xo, L

p.s. Alternative kitchen table images, because I couldn’t decide.

p.p.s. The banana bread recipe (with light brown sugar but less of it, plus walnuts).

On Friends and Kitchen Tables

Me, Myself and AI