My shadow

Wears a French tea dress

and cherry red pumps

Nonchalant she glows under a beret

She stands in the middle of the room

dicey but self-assured

Like a trapeze artist

Doing handsprings on electrical wires

During Monday morning traffic

An apparition in the throat of a suburb

With nothing but paper thin cables

and luck holding her up

Looking back over her shoulder

With apple candy eyes

She whispers, yells, screams

every transient thought

Because heaven forbid

that wire snaps tomorrow

And her bubble of a universe didn’t have

The blueprint to her atmosphere

If she could come down

and get her hands around my hair

She’d be reprimanding me in a heartbeat

She carries on that shaky line in the air

Anticipating when I meet her up there

To fix my own TV signal