written two years ago

 We act like we don’t remember that it’s the thousandth time they wanted to hold the same conversation. We give them someone to talk to, someone that’s going to remember them. And then they die,

and we get born, and we stick around for a while. We pick our noses, we drink, we smoke, we walk around, we pick up these books and we read them. And we get these ideas in our heads. Then we find imaginary friends too. We never quite figure out how they can understand us so. And they’re patient people, willing to argue, and agree with us, always at the right times. They drink with us, they walk with us, and they share these small lonely rooms with us. They’re bored with us and angry with us, and they remind us of the people we love and they watch as we pace and go mad. They watch as we pace and go mad and pace and go mad and they argue and agree. Sometimes they go.

Soon they come back, always silently.

It seems impossible. They think and write for us and we think and write for them, then they die and we go on, and we die and they go on. Nevertheless, it is wonderful for us to have them, our Imaginary Friends, who rest underneath as we stir. Let us have a toast for them, our great men and women, our silent heroes of the small room: it is good that we can now be confident before we go, that all our effort and joy, all our pacings and mutterings and glory, will in time be heard by the very sort whom we have come to love.