BY WILLIAM WREN - Canada https://billwren.com
You stepped out of the TV, ravenous and demanding pizza. “Extra cheese,” you said. “Extra, extra cheese.”
I had a coupon and ordered two.
Freed from the borders of television, you soon found the pleasures of stretching and speech that was your own. You discovered the charms of cloth and colour and understood perfectly the purring of cats.
Your smile was pearl white; your lips and eyes, moist when seen up close.
You were loved by light. It showed you to your best advantage.
Music shadowed you; your voice was always pleasing. We all loved you; everyone hoped you would look their way. You fell in love with everything tactile and the surprises of unscripted conversation.
You loved our love. You could not get enough. To please us, you stopped eating. “No cheese,” you said. “No pizza.” My coupons piled one upon another like magazines no one would read, received monthly.
In time, you were no longer new. Your skin paled and you became repetitious. You bored us and we looked straight through you for newer girls who told the old stories more quickly. And there were people who never saw you.
Your limbs grew weak and could not hold your feather weight.
One day you were gone and there was nothing remaining to show you had ever been. No one cried. You became trivia, then forgotten.
My father was ash and lived in an urn. He came to me as I slept. He said he remembered you and in remembering caused me to remember. He said, “You dreamed her to be, then dreamed a new dream and she died.”
I woke in a sweat of guilt and fright, coupons piled by my side like unread magazines.