thank you for your pretty little face

if people were to send me thank you notes simply for my existence, they would probably look something like this:

dear (but not quite dearest) noel,

thank you for your pretty little face. thank you for your wit and spunk and conversation, your stories and advice, you're nice to have around. you're a charming little being and if you left we'd miss you anytime our thoughts happened upon you. we're perfectly content with you floating on the outskirts of lives, your little smile peeking in once in a while, though you're not a staple, not a focus, nowhere near the center of any one of us. thank you for the lessons that we've learned through you, while moving on we have used them quite a bit. we are glad that you were there in that time of our lives, and if you're gone it will be as though a christmas light upon a string upon a house upon a street went out. and now we really must get going we have many dreadfully important things to do.

fairly sincerely,
us