I have abandoned inessential friends

(despite determination to never

see nor contact them again, and the sense,

oddly, that I’d not been the betrayer,

I do miss them), and by essential friends 

been abandoned (impossibility

notwithstanding, I’m not strictly against

reconciling [or cheap humility].

“Friends” only in name; if not honestly

then historically, in muddled dreams

and stories that can’t mask notes of mothball).

Now friendless I am touched and modestly 

impressed that any former friends had deemed

me worthy of relationship at all.