time lapse.

tommy is four years old, and i am his best friend. only he can see me, and it makes me feel special. we do everything together, and that's how we like it.

tommy is eight years old, and i am his best friend. he likes to stay up with me late at night, reading books like "the giving tree." we sleep in late on those mornings after, but he doesn't mind.

tommy is twelve years old, and i am his friend. he says we can't be best friends because he's twelve now, and he needs best friends that are "real." i don't understand; did the times we had mean nothing to him?

tommy is sixteen years old, and i am not his friend. he likes to be called thomas now. more "grown-up." he doesn't talk to me. he likes to take a blonde girl in his pickup truck down to the pier where they can play games. one day he kisses her behind the photo booth. i turn away so he can't see me cry. doesn't he know i can love him that much?

thomas is twenty and i am not his friend. i have become nothing but a memory, left behind for something "better" just like the giving tree. he is in college and the blonde girl he kissed at the pier is long forgotten, like me. at college parties he can kiss as many girls as he wants, as long as they've had something to drink and he has, too. he's living the life he wants and he couldn't be happier without me.

thomas is twenty four and he has graduated college. he found a nice girl with green eyes and he wants to ask her an important question. i am mentioned once, at a family reunion, by an estranged aunt who hasn't seen thomas since he was tommy. thomas laughs. he says he remembers me, and that gives me hope.

thomas is twenty eight, and i am never mentioned again. childhood friends are things of the past, and thomas lives in the present. he has a child now, a little girl. i miss tommy. the hope sparked at the reunion quickly died, and i can feel my own life force ebbing with it.

thomas is thirty two, and i am nothing. there is no need for me to be around anymore, and my own hopes of being acknowledged have been gone for a long time. he has his own family, and he doesn't need me any more. so i slip away, only to be found in times long forgotten.