what friends do

friends don’t fix anything.

they can’t get the grade back.
they can’t make her stay.
they don’t say anything wise. they never have.

what they do is stupider than that, and better:
they sit next to you and talk about nothing
until the thing that was going to eat you alive
becomes a thing you can say out loud in a normal voice.

that’s it. that’s the whole mechanism.
somebody makes a joke
and it stops being the biggest thing in the world.