I sat down to write a poem based on this idea but before I knew what was happening I’d created an actual imaginary boyfriend for myself, like the imaginary friends children sometimes have.

For quite a while the poem was called ‘My Imaginary Boyfriend’.  It already had the line ‘he has no second name’ and I was walking past the Houses of Parliament on my way to work when it dawned on me that the title of the poem needed to be my imaginary boyfriend’s first name and that his name was Stanley.

Stanley

Yesterday evening I finished
with my imaginary boyfriend.
He knew what I was going to say
before I said it which was top of my list
of reasons why we should end it.

My other reasons were as follows:
he always does exactly what I tell him;
nothing in our relationship has ever surprised me;
he has no second name.

He took it very well
all things considered.
He told me I was to think of him
as a friend and if I ever need him
I know where he is.

[Lorraine Mariner’s collection, Furniture, will be published by Picador in April 2009]