“Have you been living
as an object that you manipulate at a distance?”
Lightning is the most
delicate bizarro.
It briefly fills the room you sit in with her.
It stems, and has no mother.
“I think you’ve been living
partly as an object—”
The other part is
if you walk out to refuse her that and just pay her next week.
Not as fun as when
you were a child and your sister
bent your limp body
into furniture she’d sit on
a chair a table stop it you’re too heavy
Once or twice she might have settled on
a tall, proud lamp
and switched you on and off, on
and off, and that might have looped
a few smiles between the two of you