Do you remember me?
I’m your imaginary friend. I used to be real, of course, at least to you. We would play fantastic games of adventure in your backyard; make ourselves heroes or witches, or possibly both. We were pirates lost at sea, or orphans searching for a place to call our own.
But you found that, didn’t you?
We would take walks through our little suburban heaven, often with another imaginary friend or two. But none of us were ever false, we weren’t ever fake. We were there when you needed us.
Then you stopped.
Now the spot on the bus reserved for me is where other friends sit, friends in makeup and miniskirts who just love your little giggle. It’s not your fault, really. You were bound to grow up sometime, and imaginary friends are for children.
So I’ll just haunt the suburbia that we used to tread, imagine my own pirates, and find other people like me, people painted from dreams and pencil sketches by the lake. I’ll sit in the audience while you sing like a starlet, and cheer like a toddler at the sight. My clapping will continue in the silence, echoing long after the theater empties, but you’ll be long gone. I’m not really there, after all.
I suppose I’ve matured as well – the spark of pure childhood left when you did. My new friends’ fantasy games have rules, we take turns and share. Never do we fight for the glory of the final blow, never do we proclaim ourselves supreme and simply obliterate anything that stands in our protagonists' path to happiness. Although I am still stuck in that in-between place, invisible as an imaginary friend is meant to be, I am no longer naïve.
And neither, my friend, are you.
``
I still have your sketches.
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