The Ones Who Stay

You are not the friend who arrives with flowers. You are the friend who arrives with a plunger at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday and doesn't mention it again. You have seen my kitchen at its worst—the week I couldn't lift a sponge, the dishes growing civilizations I didn't have the diplomacy to address. You washed them without comment. When I was twenty, I thought friendship was the people you'd take a bullet for. At forty, I know it's the people who will sit with you in the car outside the party for as long as it takes for you to decide if you're going in. You have never made me feel like a project. You have made me feel like a person whose worst days are just days— ordinary, survivable, yours to witness without flinching. That is the whole of it. That is more than enough.