I know how you would shy away from the term 'best friend'. Such a lofty position to hold in one's life – one that, you think, could never be afforded to you and your self-effacing ways.

Never one to gush or to quantify feelings into measurable and incriminating words of affection, or indeed, to impart friendliness through any means other than private jokes and last-minute hugs; I know full well that this enterprise of writing for you is rather trite and pointless. I would be better off wringing my hands and waiting anxiously by your front door.

But I am through with transient sensations of red wine and naked, fictitious, unobtainable women. I am through with curing a world that does not want to be cured. I have drank more than enough coffee, so to write bitterly would only **** all sensations.

In rations of cigarettes and endless walks, you helped to facilitate a recovery that at times I felt was beyond me – and probably was, without you. You and I, experts at self-hate and isolation, found a kindness in the exchange of insults, dead arms, and dreams of an escape from these streets of all-too-familiar names and faces – our unwanted dependence on our mothers and indifferent friends.

There have been times when I have left you behind. It scalds me to think of those years you spent in containment, inside the four walls of your mother's house with only her acid tongue for company. No job, no voice, and only tedious entertainment – those torn nights where you went out of your mind with boredom and hopelessness. All whilst I was too busy and too far-off to take the time to notice.

I discarded you in favour of a love that was always going to lose its charm, lose its patience with my lazy sadness and horrendous monobrow. It was a wretched way to treat a friend, I know, and no silly poem or attempt at prose could come close to bridging the deficit.

There is no ugliness in fragility, but it is gruesome to be lonely. In the cheap affair of swing-side smoke and your father's stolen whiskey, you taught me there is no need for success, if failure is found in good company.

And yet I wish you completion and contentment with a desperate gratitude above that of all others. You have lived too long a life set in compromise with your captors; persistent aches of insufficiency in some form or another, and self-punishment for everything that is out of your control.

In sleepless nights and deathly, early mornings, in which you cannot differentiate between the two, or where dreams begin and end; you are piecing together a life of your own. A brave, painstaking betterment of yourself, after bathing so long in a helpless void. Not once was I there to help you through, to be the voice at the end of the line that I so claim to be.

Despite this, you gave me those late-night vigils, talking between screens, in words that resembled care and concern, regardless of their off-hand and conversational tone.

I know that I have made you cry during the times I have wanted to die. I know I have shut myself from you at times when you needed an open door. So from now on, everything is left on the latch for you. No weather, time, or entity, will prevent me from repaying my debts.

I have found a friend to crawl home to. All of the rest is filler. All of the rest, I can live without.