After the Static

She smelled like ozone and old commercials— the kind with jingles you didn’t know you remembered until your mouth sang along. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a weird thing she is. She stepped from the screen once the static gave out, a figure shaped from tone bars and missing episodes and sort of resembled Barbara Stanwyck. Maybe she used to be a transmission and maybe she still is. When she moved, I heard weather reports from cities I’ve never seen— her breath a forecast for forgotten places. Whatever she was, she sat on the floor in front of the TV watching a test pattern while eating invisible cereal from a real bowl and giggling. Was she supposed to be a Muse daring me to write a silly poem about test patterns? She rolls her eyes in black-and-white bars and shakes her spoon at me. She flickers and fades around the edges first— like the corners of a dream already forgetting itself. The bowl remains. The test pattern hums. Somewhere, a jingle begins to unravel and I pick up my paper and pen.