FATHER'S GRAY MACHINE

Father watches me
while I sit before
his gray machine's
eyeless box-shaped face,
in this cramped room
with half-open windows.

I run my fingers
over her naked plastic skin.
Father tells me to go on.
Don't stop caressing her keyboard,
he says.
And the child of words
slowly takes shape
on the gray machine's glowing face,
even as my fingers tense.

Through the night,
I am with her.
My eyes locked to her face,
and my hands touching her.

And as morning comes,
sunlight streaming into those
half-open windows,
I stand up, smiling, sweating,
and stretching my aching fingers,
ready to let our child of words
breathe from a paper body.
But as I let myself go to sleep,
father comes and steals our child
and makes it his own.