A boy asks how the story should be told. I tell him I don't know but as it keeps on going, we'd both figure it out.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"A friend."
A smile cracked on my face.
"No name?" I ask.
"Do I need one?"
"I guess not."
"Good, then."
"Why are you here?"
" To learn you."
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything!" He jumps into a pirhouette and I laugh in surprise.
"That's too much, I think," I say.
"Aah, no. You let some know."
"I don't let them. They jsut get into me. What do you think of me?"
"I think you're simple."
"Really? Most people would tend to disagree. They think I'm too complex. So they run away. I never get it. But that's why you're here, isn't it?"
He smiles and twirls around.
"Is that a 'yes'" I ask.
He bows.
"You're Daniel, aren't you?" I ask.
"God is judge," he says.
"You're so happy."
"So are you."
I smile.
"Do you know Ithaca," I ask.
"I know you."
"And what do you know about me?"
"You're complex," he says, a mock-serious expression on his face.
I laughed.
"Then I guess I'm an oxy-moron, huh?"
"Most people are," he says.
"You're not real," I say.
"No," he says.
"They're real," I say and point ahead of me. "You know the funny thing? The real people say more of what I want than the ones like you."
"Then we've really got a problem don't we?"
"No. You do."
My real friend held the door for me as we walked inside.
Daniel vanished.
I was judge tonight.

Last night, I didn't make it back to my bed, but I didn't sleep alone and that's what made it home.
'Home' has had to be redefined.
I told my friend after thinking on it for a while that I really haven't felt a place called 'home' in eleven years. He looked at me for a second before saying "That's almost your whole life."
"I know," I said.
We stood in the doorway for a moment and then I shrugged and sighed.
"Maybe one day I'll have it again...Home, I mean."
He smiled out of the corner of his mouth.
"We'll find it," he said.
He left then and even though I went to sleep alone just like every night before it, I went to sleep smiling.
It's cold in my room at night, so it gives me more of an excuse to wrap myself up in layers of blankets (that I pretend are arms) and to box myself in with pillows (that I pretend are someone).
So now the hours tick by just like the days and the months and the years but for once there's a glimmer of real hope that it won't always be this way. Because this morning someone was there when I woke up and smiled at me and said in a loud whisper "Good-morning."
I woke up with him looking at me from the other bed and it was nice to feel that comfort of finally having that person not only giving me happiness but to whom I give it back.
In the back of my mind there's always the knowledge that this will end one day for one reason or another. But to be honest with myself, like he said to be, this is the one thing I can't ever let myself lose. This is the one thing I must keep if I lose everything else.
And I know I'll lose because I'm already losing because I'm going against the expectation and the grain.
So in spite of them will I do this? No. Not at all. I'll do it for one reason: because it makes me happy and I know it's right.
"Be honest with yourself. Think about it."
I did already. And you already know the answer.
I'm making my own grain now, my own expectation--my own home, my own familiy. Because I can choose. And I know it's right.