Just the other day my girlfriend
from Canada said something
incredibly insightful. She said,
“You know I don’t exist.
I know that I don’t exist.
Do you really think
that your audience
isn’t going to intuit that I don’t exist
when you try to describe me?”

I smiled. She was always
so beautiful
when challenging me.
“I suspect you question
my abilities as a writer
to a fault, my dear.

“It is my very art form
to convince others to suspend disbelief
and accept even the most outlandish
of suppositions.”
“Like my existence?”
Her laugh was like music
like diamonds poured into fine crystal
like ice cream of the peanut butteriest flavor.
She was cool like ice cream, too,
my Canadian lover was.

“Indeed. I will make the people
think of hope and passion
and community. They will want you to be real
and see you as I do
just as they accept my advice
as an expert on nunsex and modern technology
and the works of Harmon G. Diddlysworth.”
“Whom you also made up.”
“That was my point.
For an imaginary construct, honey,
you really could listen better.”

“And if you’re not up to the task?”
she asked, a well-sculpted eyebrow tastefully raised in doubt. “Then, like Tinkerbell before an unenthused crowd,
you may just fade away.”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t think I like that at all.
And what are you looking at?”
“Who indeed,” I replied, winking at none
in particular.
“No, really,” reiterated my very real Canadian girlfriend
from Canada, “what’s going on?
“Jon? Jon?
God, you are so annoying sometimes…”