I know two people – they seem to fly five thousand feet above life. I stand down here and hope they’ll skywrite my name, or hello, even goodbye, something I can identify as decisive. But nothing.

Their philosophy? Friends, promises, memories, these are concepts to be considered occasionally, but they do not need to be called, or kept, or remembered. They won’t visit you when you’re in a mental institution, but they will when you move to New York. They’ll loan you five hundred dollars, but they won’t attend your wedding. They won’t return calls for six months, then they’ll show up at your Halloween party. They aren’t unreliable so much as unfathomable.

The cashier at the grocery store has spent more time with them then I have. I feel like it’s Charlie’s Angels and I’m Farrah Fawcett and they just kept going without me, and it’s wrong, and weird. Do they have new friends? Do they need friends? Do they need anything but themselves? Because that’s beyond understanding sad.

I only had a few spare keys made, and they’ve still got theirs. I can’t get them back, it doesn’t work that way. I’m on their key ring, attached, always. And every time they open their car door, or apartment door, they look at it for a second, and say quietly, “what is that for again?”