I'm thinking of taking a new imaginary lover.

But let's make it interesting. Not someone too easy to love. As a kid I was in love with Kermit the Frog and couldn't understand what he saw in the tyrannical Miss Piggy. Clearly she bullied him into that relationship. I felt sure I would make a more loving partner to him, given the chance, and certainly I wouldn't insult him by calling him Kermi. I was a better person then and didn't mind that he's scrawny and submissive and that for lack of a nose he has a high nasal voice and for such a large mouth, no lips. It occurred to me at times that he is a frog and therefore an inexcusably inappropriate choice for me, and I was very sad and anxiety ridden about being in love with something, someone, so wholly imaginary. I was sensible enough to know that we could never marry and have children, not even in my most creative fantasies, and not because of the great physical divide between amphibians and human beings (I was a child, what did I know?), but because I knew I was not brave enough to tell my grandmother, my father, my cousins: "I love a muppet frog." They already knew of course, I was ridiculous. And despite their pains and a great deal of my own, I failed to outgrow my extravagance, and so I was also a disappointment. Kermit dumped me you know and went back to that pig. She's got some kind of hold on him. I can't help thinking he needed to be the real dreamer between us. All those fantasies about fur.