My Best Friend

My Best Friend

My best friend, whose name contrasts with heaven:
always reminds of our beloved rule number seven.
She turned to me and said, as we lay under the glimmer of the faintest star,
“Yes Lana, the friends and family may come and go
but no matter how lonely you feel, I’ll always relight your broken glow.”

My best friend, whose eyes dance with the most euphoric confidence,
raised her hand in class and answered with the greatest competence,
and all the other girls glared at this… individual.
She commented on my maths score, labelling me “invincible”,
even mentioning it to those who saw me as invisible.

My best friend, who chooses to sit next to me every registration,
saunters into the classroom with her humorous smile plastered with intoxication.
From that moment we ended up drunk with glee,
and chuckled outrageously as we conversed about the past:
she reminded me when Anna walked into a lamppost and fell fast.

We burst furiously out of school, at 7 o’clock on a crisp winter night,
My best friend sniggered as I got stuck between the doors, rigid with fright.
“It’s going to catch us!” she screamed, in the rain.
Laughter filled my lungs, choking me as I ran though the dark lane:
thinking to myself, we are definitely going to do this again.

The blatant truth I take with pain,
as my best friend is nothing but in my brain.

© Maria Zahid
My Best Friend won in the Key Stage 4 (Ages 14-16) category of the 2018 Young Muslim Writers Awards, a Muslim Hands project presented in association with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study (University of London).

Children aged between 5 and 16 can submit their entries to the 2019 competition which closes on 15th August. For further information visit www.ymwa.org.uk