There he is again.

What’s he say­ing now?

You wish he’d just go away. You’re busy. He’s like an an­noy­ing fly.

You tell him to come back later.

And when he does, you’ll tell him the same, if you bother to an­swer him at all.

Be­cause you don’t re­ally want him to come back later.

What­ever he has to say, you re­ally don’t want to hear. It’s not in­ter­est­ing. Not go­ing to be in­ter­est­ing. Never was. Never will be.

He wants you to watch some movie. No.

He wants you to see some video. No.

He wants to tell you a funny joke. No.

He wants you to read some­thing he wrote. No.

He wants you to lis­ten to some­thing he com­posed. No.

You’re just not in­ter­ested.

Not right now. You’re an­swer­ing some­one on a chat.

Not right now. You’re watch­ing some other movie.

Not right now. You’re watch­ing some­one else’s video.

Not right now. You’re read­ing some­thing some­one else wrote.

Not right now.

Not ever.

So many other things to do.

Per­haps you should work on your next pro­ject? There’s al­ways a pro­ject to be worked on, and so lit­tle time.

Per­haps you should watch the news, in­stead? Ur­gent po­lit­i­cal mat­ters to get caught up on.

Per­haps you should fig­ure out what you want to cook next? You like cook­ing, and, un­like him, cook­ing is ac­tu­ally in­ter­est­ing.

Per­haps read a book? You’ll cer­tainly en­joy that more than what­ever he wrote.

You’d prob­a­bly wash each of your hairs in­di­vid­u­ally be­fore de­cid­ing you have time to look at what­ever he wants you to see.

Time.

You’ll spend time on him. Some, at least.

You’ll spend time do­ing things for him. What­ever you think are ne­ces­si­ties, mainly. Some­times nice things. Less, lately. Mostly just some shop­ping or cook­ing. He never ap­pre­ci­ates it enough.

You’ll spend money on him. Lots of money, even.

You’ll sup­port him in his goals, his dreams, at least on the sur­face. Be­neath… you’re afraid. Maybe that’s why you–

He owes you a lot, and if he ever com­plains, you won’t hes­i­tate to say so.

But pay any at­ten­tion to him?

Never.

He’s not that in­ter­est­ing.

He’s gone now.

You won’t see him for a long time, you fig­ure. Maybe not ever–not in the same way. He’s left you.

You’re not sure how to feel about that.

You think you should feel sad.

But you’re not sure you’ll re­ally no­tice the dif­fer­ence.

You had so lit­tle time to spend with him, and you spent as lit­tle of it as pos­si­ble.

In the end, you were smart not to pay him too much mind.

Now it is not so painful.