Nobody says "We don't really fight do we" unless they have just been fighting. The opening line of Sam M's «Fight» is a small act of denial, and the rest of the poem quietly takes it back. There is no question mark after "do we", so the line hovers between a question and a hope. The speaker isn't asking for information but for agreement. Two lines later the denial has softened to "We get mad at each other", and by the middle it has collapsed: "We have big fights / Like earlier today". The central idea is that a friendship can contain arguments without being broken by them. Forgiving each other is part of what the friendship is made of.
That self-contradiction is what makes the poem feel honest rather than sentimental. The speaker minimises, then admits, then explains. The word "earlier" appears twice, in "Like earlier today" and "I'm sorry about earlier", and judging by this, the poem seems to be written in the aftermath of a quarrel, perhaps as the apology itself. "It was stupid" is plain and undecorated, exactly what a person actually says when they want to move on.
The form suits that directness. This is free verse with no rhyme and almost no punctuation: no commas, no dashes, and a single full stop saved for the very last line. The lines are short, usually four to six words, and break where a speaker would naturally pause. The break in "But it never lasts more / Than a few minutes" holds the small number back for a beat, so the anger shrinks when it finally arrives. The rhythm is hesitant and conversational, like someone talking half to the friend and half to themselves.
Repetition does much of the work that imagery usually does. The poem has no metaphors, no storms or wars to dress up the argument. Instead it leans on a few ordinary words. "Always" appears three times ("We always forgive each other", "We always have our fights", "But we always make up"), and the more the speaker says it, the more it sounds like persuasion. They seem to be reassuring the friend, and perhaps themselves. "Stick" does a similar job. "You stick around" sounds like grateful surprise, as if staying were never guaranteed.
The most exposed moment comes in the middle: "I need you / That's my reason / But I still don't know yours." The vocabulary is almost childishly simple, yet the thought is sharp. The speaker knows why they stay, but not why the friend does. That imbalance turns the next lines into something like a negotiation. "I'll stick with you / If you stick with me" is mirrored in its phrasing, but the word "if" makes it conditional, a bargain that also works as a way of asking the question the speaker can't ask outright.
Then comes the word "special", the most generic in the poem, rescued by what follows: "Nothing about our friendship / Is normal." Being abnormal here is a compliment, and it covers the fights too. The ending completes the thought. "We wouldn't be us if we didn't" finishes on a negative and leaves the verb unspoken, so the reader supplies *fight* and *make up* themselves. It is also the first time the poem says "us". Until then the pronouns have been separate, "I" and "you", "we" at the edges. The last line gathers them into one word, and the full stop closes the poem like a handshake.
What makes «Fight» worth reading is its accuracy about an awkward moment: the point just after an argument, when pretending nothing happened is tempting and saying something true is harder. The poem does the harder thing. Its title promises conflict, but its real verbs are "forgive", "stick" and "make up". By the end, the fight has become evidence of the friendship rather than a threat to it.