Couch potato.
That's what they call her,
Gossipers eagerly relay.
Lazy –
Just another name,
As familiar as her own.
Alone,
They say she has no company,
But she knows it's not the truth.
Company?
Who needs company?
Just people there to judge
The paleness of her skin
Stretched taut over her bones.
How her hair needed a wash,
Maybe, a few days ago.
Alone?
They don't know that she's never alone.
Not in her cluttered room.
On the table sits a book,
The most important one,
The one that gives her the choices,
The answers to her questions.
T-V G-U-I-D-E spells blockish on the cover,
And when the silver screen flips on,
Thousands of unreachable colors.
She leans in close and watches, watches, watches,
Thousands of tiny pixels
Showing her a greater thing.
Lives lived beyond her reach,
Beyond perfection.
And she reaches out and brushes her fingers,
Drifting them across the screen,
To feel the tingle –
Static electricity.
And imagines that they're really there,
Reachable just beneath the tingle.
Couch potato.
That's what they call her.
Maybe it's better that they don't know.