At just five lines, this is among the shortest poems in Plahm’s catalog, and it wields its brevity like a blade. The opening statement—that female friendships carry a kind of intimacy male friendships rarely achieve—is presented not as complaint but as honest reckoning, the speaker acknowledging a gap in his own emotional landscape with characteristic directness. The pivot on “I’d be jealous—” creates a moment of genuine tension: the em dash suspends the reader between envy and resolution. The conditional “If not for the fact” introduces the closing turn with almost legalistic precision, as if the speaker is building a case for his own contentment. The final line’s understatement—”you’ve been a good friend too”—carries enormous weight precisely because it doesn’t try to compete with the intimacy it has just described. Instead, it stakes a quieter claim: that what exists between speaker and beloved, whatever its category, is enough. The poem functions as a micro-essay on emotional honesty between genders, embedded inside what appears to be a casual aside.

A sharp, honest aperçu that succeeds on the strength of its restraint. In five lines, Plahm manages to observe a social truth, confess vulnerability, and offer a quiet compliment—all without a wasted syllable. The em dash after “jealous” is the poem’s most sophisticated gesture, creating a pause that mirrors the speaker’s own emotional recalibration: the moment between feeling envy and choosing gratitude. The final line’s “good friend too” is perfectly calibrated—”too” doing double duty as both “also” and “as well,” suggesting the speaker recognizes he is being included in a category of intimacy he has just admitted is not his native territory. The limitation is inherent to the form: at five lines, the poem functions more as an epigram or aphorism than a fully developed poetic experience. It lacks the layered imagery and emotional accumulation that distinguish Plahm’s strongest work. But within its chosen scale, it achieves exactly what it sets out to do—and the courage of a male poet acknowledging, without defensiveness, the emotional limitations of male bonding should not be underestimated. A small poem that says a large thing quietly.