Blood

Are you a friends and family, or a family and friends type of person?

Whenever I say it or write it, I automatically use friends and family,
and I always wonder why I do that, consciously reversing it if I’m writing,
but knowing it’s too late to change once it’s shot out of my mouth.
Does friends and family sound better, the rhythm more pleasing?
How can meter ever matter more than familial relationships forged at birth?

Is it indicative of thoughtless ungratefulness that I give precedence
to those boys, still my buddies, I met in school when I was three,
or to the girl who grew up next door and still lives in her home as do I?
Are they more important to me than my mother, my father, my sister?
Whatever happed to the idea that he’s both my dad and my best friend?
Isn’t that the line from literature and all those movies and TV shows?
Was my mother too overbearing, too heavy a hand to end up my fine-feathered friend?
Aren’t my sister and I joined at the hip, stuffed in a bedroom until fourth grade,
our conspiratorial conversations forging boon bonds on all those sleepless nights?

Friends and family, or family and friends?  Why do I choose the latter?
Does blood, in the end, have a hide thick enough to withstand being thin as water?